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Chapter Text

The edges of the holocron dug into Ezra’s palm as he raced up the steps of the temple, his head tilted up, his eyes locked onto his destination.  He just had to get to the obelisk, and then he could go back and help.

Help.

Ezra stopped in his tracks, looking back over his shoulder even though he knew that no one had spoken.  A slick, cold feeling crept up from his stomach, spreading through his chest.  Something was wrong.

Help Kanan.

He had to go back.

He turned on his heel and began rushing down the stairs, that cold rising up inside him with each step he took, as if the Force itself was screaming in his ear.  He had to get to Kanan now.  Kanan was in danger.  Kanan needed his help.

As he began to run down the final set of stairs, he saw it.  Maul’s hand tightened around his lightsaber.  In one fluid motion, he turned toward Kanan, raising the blade.

Ezra summoned all his strength, calling on the Force as he leapt to the base of the stairs, his knees buckling as he landed.

A flash of bright red light shot through his vision and his whole world was consumed by pain.

Ezra was screaming.  He was on his knees, his hands pressed against his face, shrieking in pain, his fear reverberating in the air around him so strongly that Kanan was almost surprised the ground wasn’t shaking under the force of it.  He’d seen Ezra injured before, but he’d never seen him react like this.

Acting on instinct, Kanan threw his hand out, shoving Maul back, flinging him against the side of the temple.  He rushed forward and knelt down next to Ezra, taking hold of his wrists and pulling his hands away from his face, where he was no doubt rubbing dirt and who knew what else into the wound.

The wound.  Kanan choked back a gasp when he saw it.  It crossed Ezra’s face, burning deeply into his flesh; a dark, charred line across both of his eyes.

“Ezra,” Kanan said.  “Ezra, focus on my voice.  Can you hear me?”

“K—Kanan,” Ezra gasped, his voice high-pitched and straining under the weight of his own terror.  “Kanan, it – it hurts.  I can't – I…can't –”

I can't see.  He didn’t need to say it for Kanan to know.  Kanan’s mind struggled to catch up to what he was seeing as he weakly clung to the thought that there could still be hope.  If he could just get Ezra back to Atollon, the medics there could help him.  There might not even be damage done to his eyes themselves.  His eyelids could have just been seared shut by the heat of the blade.

“It’s okay,” Kanan said, releasing his grip on Ezra’s right wrist and running his hand through his padawan’s hair, pulling him close and gently kissing his forehead.  “You’ll be okay.”

“Hurts,” Ezra muttered.

“I know,” Kanan said.  “It won't for lo—”

His words were cut off by the sound of a lightsaber’s blade slashing through the air from behind him.  He shoved Ezra away from him, pushing him out of reach of Maul’s weapon, his hand closing around his own lightsaber as he began to dodge out of the way.

He was too slow.  Getting Ezra out of harm’s way had cost him precious seconds.  The blade cut deeply into his back, tearing and burning through muscle.  Kanan slumped forward, unable to hold himself upright.  His vision was already beginning to blur as Maul’s metal legs came into view.  As Kanan lay there, helpless, one foot was lifted off the ground and a second later, pain burst through his head and everything went dark.

Ezra was surrounded by darkness.  It closed in on all sides as fire burned at his face.  He lay on his side, curled up on the ground where Kanan had thrown him.  He didn’t know what was happening, but was still overcome with the sense that he had to do something.  But he couldn’t.  He hurt so much he couldn’t think straight, and the darkness around him seemed to be holding him in place, pinning him on the ground.

He heard footsteps drawing closer and reached out with one hand, feeling for…he didn’t know what.  Anything.

Someone grabbed his wrist, another hand sliding under his back and guiding him to sit up.  The hand around his wrist let go and moved beneath his knees before he was carefully lifted off the ground.  Ezra reached out again, clinging to Kanan as he was carried away from the temple.

Except it wasn’t Kanan.

The realization hit Ezra like a stun bolt to the chest.  This person didn’t feel like Kanan.  This wasn’t his master.

“Calm yourself, apprentice.”

That was Maul’s voice.  Ezra quickly let go of him and struggled against his grip, not caring how much the fall to the ground would hurt when he finally got Maul to drop him.  But Maul just tightened his hold on Ezra and calmly kept moving, swiftly carrying Ezra farther and farther away from his master.

“No!” Ezra cried, kicking at empty air.  “Let me go!  Kanan!  Kanan, help!”

“He cannot help you,” Maul said, his voice calm and steady.

“Wh—what did you do to –” Ezra’s words were cut off by another cry of pain as the wound across his face throbbed.

“The pain will pass soon,” Maul said.

“Kanan!” Ezra screamed.

He tried to reach out to his master through the Force, but the pain that blazed across his face was too much for him to focus through.  He couldn’t find Kanan.  He couldn’t even tell if Kanan was still alive.

Ezra thrashed in Maul’s arms, screaming as he was carried away from the temple, away from Kanan.  Maul just kept moving, holding onto him even tighter each time he tried to get away.

Ezra gasped as he was dropped onto a hard surface.  He tried to sit up, his hand bracing against something behind him.  Out of nowhere, a hand gripped his shoulder, shoving him back onto the ground as another hand pressed against his forehead.

“Rest, apprentice,” Maul said.

“No!” Ezra shouted as he felt even more darkness, this time like living shadows, pressing in around him.  He tried to fight them off, to shield himself from the invasion of his mind, but his eyes hurt so much and he couldn’t focus through the pain.  The shadows surrounded him, flowing into him like water into his lungs.  He struggled against Maul’s grip on him, but he could feel himself growing weaker as his limbs became heavy and his mind grew more and more clouded.

The shadows pressed down on him once more and Ezra slipped into the darkness.

“Kanan!”

Kanan gasped in pain as he tried to push himself up off of the ground, his shoulder burning with white-hot agony.  Ahsoka knelt beside him, shaking his uninjured shoulder.

“Ezra!” he called, his head whipping around as he frantically searched for his padawan.  “Ezra, where are you?!”

“He’s not here,” Ahsoka said.  “Kanan, what –”

“Maul,” Kanan growled.  “Maul was after him.  He’s –”

Kanan lurched to his feet and cried out, his left hand flying to his right shoulder.  He tried to brush Ahsoka off as she reached out to steady him, only to lose his balance as a wave of pain crashed over him.

“We have to go after him,” Kanan said as he slumped against Ahsoka’s side.  He felt Ahsoka stiffen beside him, raising her eyes to the surface above them.

“We might have bigger problems right now,” she said, her voice low, as if she was talking more to herself than to Kanan.

“Bigger –” and then Kanan felt it.  The cold that sank deep under his skin, deeper than Maul’s, deeper than the Inquisitors’.  Something else was coming.  Something worse.

“Kanan, we have to go,” Ahsoka said.

“Not without Ezra,” Kanan said.  “He’s –”

He reached out across their bond to find Ezra’s presence muted.  He was unconscious, and as Kanan forced himself to focus through the pain, he realized that Ezra wasn’t even on the planet anymore.

“He’s gone,” he muttered.  “He’s – no.”

He lunged away from Ahsoka’s side, as if he could chase after Ezra even though he was on the other side of the atmosphere.

“Kanan!” Ahsoka said, catching him as he stumbled and nearly fell again.  “We have to leave.  We can't help Ezra from here.”

He felt his commlink being pulled away from his belt as Ahsoka took it.

“Chopper,” she said.  “We need a pickup.  Fast.”

Kanan’s head was pounding as he finally gave in and let himself lean on Ahsoka.  He knew she was right.  Ezra was long gone, and there was nothing they could do for him by staying on Malachor.  If anything, staying would only put them in more danger from whoever was approaching.

I’m so sorry, Ezra, he thought, reaching out toward his padawan’s muted presence, growing fainter and fainter as he was taken farther away.  We’re coming for you.  I promise, I’ll find you.

Chapter Text

When Ezra woke, he could barely move.

There were straps around his wrist and ankles, holding him down against something, and something thick and heavy had been wrapped around his head, covering his eyes.  Icy cold fear coiled in Ezra’s stomach as he struggled to figure out what was going on.

He whimpered, pulling at the restraints.  The one around his left ankle felt a little loose.  Maybe if he could –

He froze when he heard a door opening and footsteps approaching where he lay.

“Who’s there?” he asked.

“My name is Sena Kenten,” a gentle voice said.  “I’m one of the nurses here.”

“Wh—where am I?” Ezra asked, his voice breaking.

“You’re in a medcenter on Telos,” the nurse said.  “Your guardian brought you here after your…incident.”

“My…” Ezra’s voice trailed off as he tried to figure out what she meant.  What guardian?  Who –

Maul.  It had to be him.  He’d brought Ezra here.  Kanan would have just brought him back to Atollon and let the medics there take care of him.

The memories came back in fragments.  The lightsaber burning across his face.  Kanan’s voice.  Darkness.  Someone lifting him up.  Maul pinning him down somewhere, tearing into his mind and forcing him into unconsciousness.

“Please,” Ezra gasped.  “Help me.”

“What’s wrong, honey?” Sena asked.

“I – I’ve been kidnapped,” Ezra said quickly, rushing to get the words out in case anyone else entered the room.  “The man who brought me here, he’s not my guardian.  He did this to me when he took me.”

“Hey,” Sena said, gently putting a hand on his shoulder, causing Ezra to flinch violently and pull against his restraints.  “It’s alright.  You’re safe here.”

“You don’t understand,” Ezra said.  How could she be so calm about this?  “He’s dangerous.  He’ll –”

“I understand,” Sena told him.  “He told us you might say something like this.”

“What?”

“He told us you had been fixating on the idea that you were kidnapped,” Shena said.

“What are you talking about?” Ezra asked, the pitch of his voice rising as his heart hammered in his chest.

“You had a mental break,” the nurse told him.  “He said it was going on for weeks before you did this to yourself.”

“No,” Ezra said.

“You’re sick, honey,” Sena said.  “And it made you hurt yourself.”

“No!” Ezra cried, wrenching at his restraints.  “He’s lying!  He did this to me!  He kidnapped me!  Please, listen to me!”

“If you don’t calm down, I’m going to have to sedate you,” the nurse said, that calm, sweet tone still in her voice, the threat sounding like just the smallest drop of poison.

“Just let me contact my friends,” Ezra said.  “They’ll tell you I’m telling the truth.  Please!”

The sound of a door sliding open met his ears and a hard, cold knot formed in his chest.  He could feel the same biting cold he’d felt on Malachor; the cold that had surrounded him and pushed him down into the darkness.

“He’s very agitated,” Sena said.  “I was about to give him a sedative.”

“There’s no need.”  Ezra shuddered at the sound of Maul’s voice, perfectly calm as if he wasn’t holding a hostage.  “I can get him to calm down.”

“Hit the call button if you need anything,” the nurse said.  The door opened again and Ezra’s breath caught in his throat as he heard her footsteps fading away.

His heart hammered as he lay there, painfully aware of the restraints holding him down to the bed.  He clenched his jaw, drawing in a long, deep breath as he reminded himself that if Maul had wanted him dead, he wouldn’t be here, in a medcenter.  But that thought did nothing to calm his fear.  He was in a medcenter, and that meant Maul had to have bigger plans for him.

“Is this your plan?” he asked, forcing a sharp edge of defiance into his voice.  “Have me locked up in a mental ward as some kind of kriffed-up revenge against the Jedi?”

“I talked them out of putting you in the psychiatric unit,” Maul said.  “I convinced the you were better off at home, with me.  You should be thanking me.”

Ezra forced out a bitter laugh even as his heart hammered in his chest.

“You’re right,” he said.  “Thanks for burning my eyes out, you son of a –”

His throat tightened, cutting off his words.  He wrenched at the restraints, instinctively trying to move his hands to pry away an obstruction he knew wasn’t really there.  His lungs burned from lack of air as he thrashed on the bed, the cuffs biting into his wrists and ankles.

As suddenly as it had been taken away, the air returned.  Ezra gasped as Maul’s Force grip on his throat released and he was finally able to breathe again.

“Mind your tongue, boy,” Maul growled.  “Unless you want that to be the next body part you lose.”

“You won't get away with this,” Ezra said.  “Someone will listen to me.”

“All they will hear is the rantings of a delusional boy,” Maul said.  “A boy who went mad and burned out his own eyes.  Nothing you say will make a difference.”

Ezra’s chest went cold, a hard lump forming in his throat.

“You made sure they wouldn’t believe me,” he said, barely able to get his voice to rise past a whisper.

“It was almost too easy,” Maul said.  Ezra could hear the sadistic smile in his voice and instinctively tugged at the restraints.  “They never even asked for proof that I was your guardian.”

“Why are you doing this?” Ezra asked, his voice shaking.

“Your master is weak,” Maul said.  “You need someone to teach you the true nature of the Force.”

“No,” Ezra said.  “I’ll never learn from you.”

He gasped as he felt Maul’s hand close around his arm, his fingers digging harshly into Ezra’s skin.

“You won't have a choice,” Maul said, his grip tightening, drawing a sharp gasp of pain from Ezra.  “I’ve shielded your signature well enough that your former master will never find you.”

“Let me g—”

Before Ezra could finish his sentence, Maul’s hand vanished and the door opened.

“Is he awake?” a man’s voice asked as a new set of footsteps drew closer.

“He is,” Maul said, the harsh tone he had been using to threaten Ezra just seconds ago gone from his voice.

“We’ve finished our assessment of his injuries,” the man said, his voice gentle, almost apologetic.  “And his sight will never return.”

A quiet whimper escaped Ezra’s throat.  It had to be a mistake.  It had to.  His vision couldn’t be gone.  He couldn’t be blind, trapped with Maul, separated from Kanan, at the mercy of the man who’d done this to him.  He couldn’t be.  He couldn’t do this; not alone, not without Kanan.

“I’m sorry,” the man said.

“No,” Ezra muttered, pulling at his restraints.  “No.  It’s not true.  It’s not.”

His breath came in short, sharp gasps as he wrenched at the restraints.  He could feel blood welling up at the edges of the cuffs as they dug into his skin.  His ears were ringing so much he didn’t hear a word the man was saying until the word sedate broke through.

“No!” Ezra cried.  “Don’t!”

He tried to pull away as a hypospray was pressed against his arm, but the restraints were so tight that he couldn’t even manage an inch of movement.  The needle pierced his skin and within seconds, his head grew fuzzy, his mind feeling heavy as the sedative worked its way through his system.

He cried out as he felt a hand on his shoulder and everything disappeared.

Chapter Text

Ezra wanted to scream.

He wanted to wrench himself out of Maul’s grip and run as far away as he could, run back to Atollon and to Kanan and put as much distance between himself and this place as possible.  But the only thing keeping him tethered to reality was Maul’s hand on his arm, leading him across the landing platform.

It had been a week since Ezra had woken up in the medcenter, and in that time Maul had led him anytime he tried to walk.  Even though he was used to it by now, the thought of it still made Ezra feel sick.  Even worse was that he knew he needed it.  He couldn’t manage on his own yet.  If Maul’s hand disappeared, so did Ezra’s sense of where he was.

As they walked, it was all Ezra could do to keep himself from hyperventilating as his fear clawed at the inside of his mind like a caged animal.  Just minutes ago, he’d been discharged from the medcenter.  He didn’t know where Maul planned to take him next, only that he had no chance of getting away before it happened.

He’d tried to tell the nurses and medics what was really happening, but just as Maul had predicted, no one would listen.  To them, he was just crazy, or just a kid, and Maul was his caring, responsible guardian who only wanted what was best for him.  The staff at the medcenter had been his only chance of escape, and he hadn’t been able to convince any of them.

Ezra stumbled as the surface beneath his feet abruptly changed.  Maul’s grip on his arm tightened, stopping him from falling.

“What –” Ezra’s voice trailed off as he realized Maul was leading him up an incline.  “…A—are we boarding a ship?”

“We are,” Maul said.

“Where are you taking me?” Ezra asked, his voice shaking as Maul led him deeper into the ship.

“If you don’t make trouble, you’ll find out one day,” Maul said.  Ezra bristled at the answer.

“It’s not like I can go anywhere,” he said, a hard lump forming in his throat, the tremor in his voice undercutting his anger.  It was true.  He couldn’t go anywhere on his own.  Maul was completely in control now.

As if he’d known what Ezra was thinking and wanted to drive home the point, Maul pushed Ezra backwards.  Ezra felt something hit the back of his knees just before he collapsed into a seat.  Maul grabbed one of his arms, fastening a strap around his wrist.  Ezra tried to move his other hand out of the way before it could be restrained, but Maul easily caught his arm and pinned it down, tightening another strap around it and binding Ezra to the seat.

Ezra tugged at the restraints as Maul began the startup sequence, trying to see if there was any give to them, any weak point that he could use to break free.

And then what?

The thought made him freeze in place, his chest going cold.  Trying to find a way out of his restraints was an instinctive reaction, but he’d just said it himself.  He couldn’t go anywhere.  He doubted he would even be able to make it through this ship on his own.

As the ship lifted off, Ezra felt the bandages on his face grow wet as tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

At least he could still cry.

For now, that might be the only thing he could do.

“Why would you even want me?” Ezra asked, his voice bitter.  They had been flying for over an hour now.  He didn’t know how much of that time he’d spent crying, but once it was over, an eerie silence had fallen through the ship.  It might not have been so unnerving if he could see, but without his eyes, Ezra had been plunged into an empty void that even the ambient noise of the ship couldn’t hold back.

“Why would you want an apprentice who can't see?” he asked.

“You are incredibly powerful, Ezra,” Maul said.  “And that power has nothing to do with your vision.”

“Is that why you did this?” Ezra growled.  “To make it easier to control me so you could use me for whatever kriffed-up plans you have?”

“I never intended to blind you,” Maul said.  “But sight or no, there is still much I can teach you.”

As he spoke, the memory, lost in the haze of everything that had come after, resurfaced in Ezra’s mind and he realized that Maul was telling the truth.  Maul hadn’t been trying to hurt him at all.  Kanan had been Maul’s real target.  Maul had been trying to kill his master.

“I won’t let you teach me anything,” Ezra said, his voice quiet as his hand began shaking with rage.

“I wasn't planning to give you a choice,” Maul said, sounding almost amused by Ezra's attempt at defiance.

“I won't let you!” Ezra said again.  He gasped as he felt Maul’s hand close around his jaw.

“Don’t kriffing touch me!” he shouted.  He tried to pull away, only for Maul’s grip to grow tighter, shoving his head back against the seat.

“Listen to me, Ezra,” Maul said, the sudden harshness in his voice sending a chill down Ezra’s spine.  “You are not going back to the Jedi.  That part of your life is over.”

“No!”

Maul’s nails dug into Ezra’s skin and Ezra cried out, pulling at his restraints in a vain attempt to get Maul away from him.

“You used the dark side to open the temple on Malachor,” Maul said.  “It was easy for you.  I could sense how much you wanted to embrace it.  The Jedi cannot help you realize your potential.  I can.”

“Let go of me,” Ezra growled.

To his surprise, Maul released him, his hand vanishing so abruptly that Ezra gasped as the one thing that told him where Maul actually was disappeared.  He shuddered, shrinking back against the seat.  His heart was pounding, even as he fought to keep his fear from showing.  He didn’t know what to do.  He couldn’t kriffing see anything, the pain was so bad he couldn’t focus through it and use the Force to defend himself, and he didn’t know where Maul was taking him or what would happen to him once they got there.  He was trapped, just as much as he had been in the medcenter.

“Please,” he said, his voice wavering as tears began to sting at his eyes again.  “Just let me go home.”

“Do not ask me that again,” Maul growled.

“Please –”

“I won't warn you again, apprentice.”

Ezra fell silent, hating himself for obeying the order and for begging in the first place.  But there was nothing else he could do right now.  Maul could do anything to him right now and he wouldn’t be able to stop it.

“That’s better,” Maul said.

Ezra had to physically bite down on his tongue to stop himself from saying anything, not wanting to take the bait while he was restrained and unable to defend himself.  He took a long, slow breath, trying to reign in his anger so he wouldn’t say something that Maul would make him regret.

“The sooner you can accept this, the easier it will be for you,” Maul said.  Anger flared in Ezra’s chest, not just at Maul’s words, but at the tone in his voice, like he wanted Ezra to think he really cared what was easy for him.

“I will never accept this,” Ezra said.  “You’re not my master.  You never will be.  One day, I’ll escape.  I’ll find my way back to my family if it –”

His words were cut off as Maul grabbed his jaw again and shoved something – a piece of cloth by the feel of it – into his mouth.  He cried out as Maul’s nails dug into his skin.

“I think some silence will help you contemplate your situation,” Maul said.

Ezra let out a low growl, knowing Maul wouldn’t hear anything he tried to say, anyway.  He grunted as Maul struck his face.

“If you want to stay conscious, you are going to stay quiet,” Maul said.  “Do you understand me, apprentice?”

Ezra only growled again, wishing he could do so much as glare at Maul.

“Do you understand me?” Maul snapped.

A nauseating mixture of rage and humiliation rose up in Ezra’s chest as he slowly nodded.

“Good,” Maul said.

Tears stung at Ezra’s eyes again as silence fell between them.  There was nothing he could do now but wait until they reached wherever it was Maul was taking him.  At least for now, he was truly and completely trapped.

Chapter Text

Ezra stumbled along beside Maul as the man led him with a tight, bruising grip on his arm.  They were outside; that much Ezra could tell from the feel of the air on his skin and the rough terrain under his feet.  Every few steps, he would find himself tripping over twigs and tree roots, nearly falling before Maul would tighten his grip and keep him on his feet.  Ezra tried to listen intently, desperate for anything he could learn about the planet he and Maul had landed on just moments ago, but he kept finding it impossible to focus on the sounds around him and the ground under his feet at the same time.

“Can—can’t we slow down?” Ezra gasped.  He hissed in pain as Maul’s grip tightened around his arm.

“It’s not far now,” Maul said.  “Just keep up.”

Knowing that asking again wouldn’t get him anywhere, Ezra tried to keep pace with Maul.  At long last, the ground beneath his feet evened out, and a moment later, the air around him seemed to shift.  It felt…strange, in a way he couldn’t quite understand.  The sounds of his and Maul’s footsteps and his own panicked breathing echoed around him, almost like he was in a large enclosed space like a hangar, or a cavern.  As Maul led him deeper into whatever this place was, Ezra shivered.  It wasn’t physical cold he was feeling.  It was something else.  Something deeper.  It was the cold he’d felt when he and Kanan had faced Vader on Lothal, and again when they'd landed on Malachor.  The living, all-consuming cold of the dark side.

“Where are we?” Ezra asked as they abruptly stopped walking.

“I already told you, Ezra,” Maul said.  “You will find out where we are if you don’t make trouble.  Once I know I can trust you, then I will tell you.”

Ezra’s hand curled into a fist at his side, his teeth grinding against each other as he clenched his jaw.  Maul seemed so certain that one day, Ezra would stop fighting, would become the good, obedient apprentice he wanted, and that made Ezra even angrier than the fact that Maul had taken him in the first place.  Maul didn’t know him.  He wasn’t going to give up that easily.

“I’ll escape,” Ezra said.  “One day.  You can't keep me here forever.”

Ezra cried out as Maul grabbed his arm, twisting it up behind his back and shoving him forward into the something made of solid rock.

“Listen to me, boy,” Maul growled.  “I will keep you here as long as it takes.  You will accept your place as my apprentice and you will serve me loyally.  You are not going back to the Jedi.”

“Let go of me!” Ezra growled.  He cried out again as Maul wrenched his arm farther back, sending pain shooting through his shoulder.

“You will address me as “Master,”” Maul said.  “And you will speak to me with respect.  Do you understand me?”

“Let…go,” Ezra said, each word coming out in a sharp, pained gasp as he struggled against Maul’s grip on him, straining his shoulder.

He could practically hear his shoulder beginning to creak as Maul twisted it even farther.  He whimpered, his struggles stopping immediately.  For a moment, all was silent, and he knew Maul wasn’t going to let go of him until he gave in.

“Do you understand me?” Maul repeated, his voice a low growl in Ezra’s ear.

“Yes,” Ezra gasped.  He bit down on his lower lip to hold back another cry of pain as his shoulder began throbbing.

“Yes, what?”

“Y—yes, Master,” Ezra said, his voice breaking.

Maul dragged him away from the hard surface he’d been slammed against, relaxing the grip on his arm slightly before throwing him to the ground.  The sharp taste of blood filled Ezra’s mouth as he bit down on his tongue.  He hugged his arms around himself, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps as his stomach twisted itself in knots.

He’d betrayed Kanan, and all it had taken to get him to do it was a little bit of pain.

“Hold out your hand,” Maul said.

“Wh—why?” Ezra asked, his voice shaking.  He cried out as pain burst across his face.

“I said hold out your hand,” Maul growled.

Ezra’s hand shook as he obeyed Maul’s order.  After a moment, a small, circular object was dropped into his palm.  Ezra’s fingers closed around it, carefully feeling at it as he tried to determine what it was.  It appeared to be some kind of…pill?

Ezra tilted his head up toward Maul, only for the knot in his stomach to tighten as he remembered that he couldn’t actually look at the man standing over him.

“Swallow it,” Maul said.

In spite of the sheer terror and disgust with himself roiling in his gut, Ezra couldn’t help but laugh.  The harsh, humorless sound echoed in the air around him.  Did Maul really think he was going to do that?

“No,” he said.

“Now, Ezra,” Maul snapped.

“I’m not taking some kriffing pill you gave me when I don’t even know what it is!” Ezra said as he pushed himself back to his feet.  “How stupid do you think I am?”

“It is an antibiotic,” Maul said.  Ezra flinched at the impatience in his voice and the anger he felt pulsing through the Force.  “And unless you want what’s left of your eyes to get infected and rot out of your skull, you will take it now.”

Ezra’s fist tightened around the pill in his hand, silently debating whether he could believe Maul or not.  Maul wanted him as an apprentice, which meant Maul wanted him alive, so he could be reasonably sure the pill wouldn’t kill him.  But that didn’t mean it was what Maul said it was.  But if it was an antibiotic and he didn’t take it, Maul was right.  He could get an infection in his eyes that could be deadly.

Slowly, his hand shaking, Ezra placed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it.

“Was that really so hard?” Maul asked.

“Yes,” Ezra growled.  “It was.”

“Defiance won't get you anywhere, Ezra,” Maul said.  “But you will lose that soon enough.”

That’s what you think, Ezra thought.  If Maul thought he was going to just give up and stop fighting back, he had another thing coming.

“Ezra,” Maul snapped.  Ezra flinched, wondering if Maul somehow knew what had just gone through his mind.  “The less time you spend fighting me, the sooner you might actually learn something.”

Maul began pacing in front of him, the sound of each of his footsteps making Ezra’s heart rate spike.  He fought not to flinch each time Maul passed in front of him, his presence in the Force burning with frustration.

“You want to defeat the Sith,” Maul said, that frustration only just creeping into his voice.  “The only way you will ever be strong enough to do so is if you embrace the true source of your power.  Your anger gives you strength.  You just need the right teacher to show you how to wield it.”

“You don’t have anything to teach me,” Ezra said.

“I can teach you things your former master never could,” Maul said.  “Things beyond the powers of the Jedi.  Your petulant refusal will only hold you back.”

“I won't learn from you,” Ezra snapped.  “I don’t care how many lies you tell me about becoming more powerful.  I will never learn from you.”

Maul abruptly stopped pacing and Ezra braced himself, waiting for another blow, another warning to speak to his “master” with respect.  But it never came.  Maul simply spoke, his voice calm.

“I can teach you how to survive without your sight.”

Silence fell between them as the weight of what he’d said crashed down on Ezra.  He wanted to tell Maul to kriff off, that he would never learn from a Sith, no matter what he could offer.  But he could barely take a single step on his own anymore.  Whenever Maul wasn’t touching him, he was overcome by sheer terror, wondering if Maul would walk away, leaving him stranded in that dark void, barely able to understand anything about his surroundings.  He couldn’t keep living like this, never fully knowing where he was or what was happening around him, dependent on Maul’s touch to be his anchor.  He needed to be able to do things on his own if he was ever going to escape and find his way home.

Ezra gasped as Maul grabbed his chin, tilting his head up, the effect of the gesture just barely diminished by the fact that Ezra couldn’t look at him.

“You will learn what I have to teach you, Ezra,” Maul said.  “And if you do so willingly, I will help you learn how to manage without your sight.  If you refuse, I can still find a use for you.  Either way, you will embrace the dark side and take your rightful place as my apprentice.”

“I’m not your apprentice,” Ezra said, wrenching himself out of Maul’s grip.  “I don’t care if you make me call you “Master.”  I will never be your apprentice.”

“You already are,” Maul said.  “Or have you already forgotten that you were able to retrieve the holocron on Malachor?  My own master and I failed to enter the temple years ago, but together, you and I succeeded.  A Sith temple will only open to a master and an apprentice.  You were destined to be my student, Ezra.”

“No,” Ezra said.  “I’m not.  I never was.  I am a Jedi, and nothing you do to me will ever change that.”

“You are no Jedi,” Maul said.  “You were never meant to be one.  You were meant to fight at my side.  I know you felt our connection on Malachor.  You just need to embrace it.”

“We don’t have any connection,” Ezra said.

It wasn’t true.  He’d felt the faintest sparks of that connection when they’d worked together to open the doors.  The connection had only grown stronger during his week in the medcenter.  He’d clung to it, letting it be his anchor as he lay there, trapped in the darkness and the haze of painkillers.  Those threads of Maul’s presence had worked their way into his mind, taking root until a true bond had formed.  He could deny it all he wished, but he knew the truth, and so did Maul.

Even so, Ezra refused to believe that their connection meant he was destined to be Maul’s apprentice.  They’d had to connect to get the doors open, but it didn’t mean anything more than that.

“Don’t try to deny it, Ezra,” Maul said.  “We both know the truth.”

Ezra’s hands curled into fists at his sides as he clenched his jaw.  He wasn’t about to admit that Maul was right, even if they both knew it.

“Very well,” Maul said.  “If you won't accept your fate, you will never learn to survive without your sight.”

“No,” Ezra said, his voice breaking.  “I – I can't…”

He hated admitting it, even to himself, but he needed Maul’s help.  He’d known it from the moment Maul had made him the offer.  And the only way he would get what he wanted from Maul was to give him something in return.  To give him himself in return.

He could feel Maul watching him, waiting, knowing he was about to break.

I’m sorry, Kanan, he thought.  I’m only doing this so I can come home.

“I – I’ll do it,” Ezra said.  “I’ll learn from you.  I’ll –”

His voice broke off as a hard lump formed in his throat.  He swallowed, trying to force down the shame and fear that rose up like bile, threatening to choke him.  He had to do this.  He had to get home, and this was his best chance.

“I’ll be your apprentice,” he said.  “If you promise to teach me how to live without my sight, I’ll do what you want.”

Ezra hung his head and hugged his arms around himself.  He just wanted to go home.  He repeated that thought over and over in his head, reminding himself that that was the only reason he was doing this.  He wasn’t betraying Kanan.  He would never turn to the dark side.  He was just trying to get home.

Chapter Text

Kanan barely heard the door open.  The sound was distant and faint, as if it was coming from the other side of the ship.  He immediately set aside his sense of Hera’s presence.  Muted as it was, it was a distraction.  She wasn’t who he was trying to find.

He knew Ezra was still alive.  Their bond was still there, firmly rooted in his mind.  If it broke, he would feel it, just as he’d felt his bond with his master snap that night on Kaller.  But past the boundaries of his own mind, Ezra’s Force signature had disappeared, removed from Kanan’s reach.

Kanan had been trying to use the remaining shreds of his apprentice’s signature to find him for days now.  And just like yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, he was getting nowhere.

Finally, he opened his eyes, releasing his mental hold on his end of the bond.  As he looked up from where he sat on the edge of his bunk, he saw Hera leaning against the wall beside the door, watching him.

“Anything?” she asked.  Kanan shook his head.

“I can't sense him at all,” he said.  “It’s like he’s been erased.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and pressing a hand to his forehead.  He stared down at the floor for a moment as he collected himself before looking back up at Hera.

“Have Ahsoka or Sato –”

Hera was already shaking her head.

“Nothing,” she said.  She looked away for a moment, her eyes focusing on the joining of the floor and the wall.

“Kanan,” she said, still not meeting his eyes.  “Are you sure he’s –”

“He’s not dead, Hera,” Kanan said.  “I know he isn’t.  I would have felt it.”

He took a long, shuddering breath and straightened up, his hands balling into fists at his sides for a moment before he released them.

“He’s not dead,” he said again, shaking his head.  “But I can't find him.”

“Is there anything else you can try?” Hera asked.

“I’ve tried everything I know,” Kanan said.  “I was only a padawan for a few months.  I never learned how to do anything like this.  And now Ezra’s out there somewhere being held hostage by a Sith Lord, and I can't do anything to help him.”

He barely realized what he was doing as he slammed the heel of his hand against the edge of the bunk, his fingers curling around it and gripping it so tightly his knuckles went pale.

“I’m kriffing useless right now,” he said.  “To him and to the rebellion.”

“You’re doing everything you can,” Hera said, crossing the room and sitting down beside him.  “And Ezra knows that.  He knows you, and he knows none of us would just abandon him.”

“And what if he doesn’t?” Kanan asked.  “We don’t know what Maul is doing to him.  He could have him completely brainwashed by now for all we know.”

“I know,” Hera said, her shoulders and lekku drooping just enough for Kanan to notice.  “But you’ve been trying every way you know to find him using the Force and it isn’t working.  It might be that all we can do right now is wait until someone gives us intel that will help us find him.”

“We don’t know that that will happen,” Kanan said, his voice weak.

Hera looked away, her shoulders going tense.  She hadn’t needed Kanan to say it.  They both knew that they might never get information that would lead them to Ezra.  The rebellion didn’t have spies everywhere, and not all of them could be contacted to let them know about Ezra’s disappearance.

They would keep looking for Ezra.  Of course they would keep looking for Ezra.  But they weren’t naïve.  They both knew that no matter how hard they looked, if Maul had hidden Ezra well enough, they might never find him until Ezra found a way to reach out to them.

“He’s a survivor, Kanan,” Hera said.  “He’ll get through this, and either we will find him or he’ll find his way back to us.”

Her fingers threaded through his as she gripped his hand tightly.

“We’ll get him back,” she said.  “One way or another, he’s coming home.”

Something clamped down on Ezra’s shoulder, shaking him.  He cried out, pulling away from the hand as he sat up.

“Hold out your hand,” Maul said, his voice harsh.

Ezra obeyed, not wanting to face the consequences for resisting something as small as this.  A moment later, something dropped into his hand.  He recognized the object as he felt it with his fingers.  It was another pill, the same size and shape as the last one Maul had given him.

“Take it,” Maul said.

Ezra hesitated for a moment before putting the pill in his mouth and swallowing it.  He winced as the wound across his eyes began throbbing again.  The pain medication he’d been given at the medcenter had long since worn off, and the pain had kept him awake for most of the time that Maul had left him alone to sleep.

“Did they give me pain meds, too?” he asked.

“You can have them once you’ve earned them,” Maul said.  “Now, get up.”

As Ezra stumbled to his feet, Maul grabbed his wrist.  Ezra winced and instinctively tried to pull away.  Maul only tightened his grip, tugging on Ezra’s arm and forcing him to follow.  Ezra heard the sound of a door opening just before he was pulled through it.  They stopped and Maul grabbed his other hand, pressing Ezra’s fingers against the wall beside him.

“Keep your hand on the wall,” Maul said.  “Use it to keep your bearings.”

As Maul led him through the corridors, still keeping a tight grip on his wrist, Ezra trailed his fingers along the wall.  He tried to count the number of steps they took between each twist and turn, but Maul was moving so fast that Ezra could never be sure that his count was accurate.

At long last, as Ezra’s hand caught on something that felt like the edge of a door, something seemed to change.  The air around him felt freer and the sound of his and Maul’s footsteps echoed in the air around him.  It sounded and felt like the same large space they’d been in the day before.

They stopped walking and Maul released his grip on Ezra’s wrist.  Ezra immediately froze, his heart hammering.  Without Maul’s hand on his arm, it was like his tether to the rest of the world had snapped.  It didn’t matter that he still had his other senses; without his vision, he felt lost.  In some ways, he’d never realized just how much he depended on his eyes until he could no longer use them.

“Control your fear,” Maul growled.  Ezra flinched, fighting to shove his fear to the back of his mind and bury it where Maul wouldn’t be able to sense it.  He could sense Maul’s displeasure in his “weakness” shooting across their fledgling bond and mentally shrank away from it.

“Your first lesson starts now,” Maul said.  Ezra jumped as he realized that Maul’s voice was suddenly coming from behind him.  He hadn’t even noticed the sound of Maul’s footsteps.  “I assume your former master taught you the basics of how to sense oncoming attacks through the Force.”

You mean my real master, Ezra thought.  He didn’t dare to say it out loud.  If he wanted Maul to trust him enough to teach him things that would help him escape, he had to pretend to give in and be what Maul wanted him to be.

“Yes,” Ezra said, his voice flat as he turned to face Maul.  “He did.”

A sharp spike in the Force alerted him just before it happened, but Ezra couldn’t get out of the way in time to dodge the blow to his face.  He stumbled back, his hand flying to his right cheek.

“Clearly he didn’t teach you well,” Maul said.

Ezra could feel the next attack coming, but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.  Maul’s fist slammed into the side of his head and Ezra cried out as pain pulsed across the wound beneath his bandages.  He reached out through the Force, trying to focus on Maul and nothing else, but the pounding in his skull and across his face made it nearly impossible to concentrate.

He gasped as Maul grabbed him by the front of his shirt and threw him backwards into a hard surface.  A wall, maybe?  Ezra didn’t have time to think about it as Maul’s fist slammed into his stomach, knocking the breath out of him.

“S—stop!” Ezra cried.

“Not until you can stop just one attack,” Maul said.  He followed up with another blow to Ezra’s stomach that left him doubled over, retching.

“Please,” Ezra said, his voice breaking.  “I can't –”

His words were cut off by another blow to the head.  As he was still reeling, Maul grabbed him by the front of his shirt and threw him to the ground, kicking him in the side.  As blow after blow rained down on him, Ezra desperately reached out through the Force, trying to track Maul’s movement.  But Maul was too fast for him, and the pain shooting across his face kept breaking his focus.

Curling up on his side, his legs shielding his chest and stomach, Ezra screamed, lashing out wildly through the Force, aiming for nothing and everything within reach.  There was a dull thud and the blows stopped abruptly.  He reached out again, feeling for Maul’s dark, twisted presence in the Force.  The pain in his wound was still a distraction, but he could just barely sense Maul a short distance away from him.  He stumbled to his feet, reaching out into the void that surrounded him, searching for anything that he could use to anchor himself and find a direction to run.

He froze as he heard Maul’s footsteps approaching, bracing himself for another blow.  He jumped and yelped when he felt Maul’s hand rest gently on his arm.

“Very good, apprentice,” he said, sounding almost proud in a way that made Ezra feel sick.

“Don’t,” Ezra growled before he could stop himself.  He bit down on the inside of his cheek before he could say anything else.  He needed Maul to think that he’d given up.

“I see you’re learning to hold your tongue,” Maul said.

Ezra said nothing, fighting to contain his anger.  He wanted nothing more than to lash out and attack Maul, but he knew that in his current state, he had no hope of doing anything but getting himself hurt.  And more than that, he knew he shouldn’t do it.  Kanan’s voice echoed in the back of his mind, warning him that acting out of anger was the first step down a dangerous path.

He took a breath, releasing his anger.  It wouldn’t help him now, and he wouldn’t let himself start down that path.

“Don’t let your anger go, Ezra,” Maul said.  “Use it.  You will never become as powerful as you need to be to survive if you keep following the teachings of the Jedi.”

Ezra bit down on his cheek again, forcing down the bitter retorts that surfaced in his mind.

“It –” his voice cut off and he swallowed nervously as he forced himself to keep talking, reminding himself that he’d resolved to do what he had to.  “It’s not easy, Master.  Kanan taught me everything I know about the Force.”

“He was holding you back,” Maul said.  “And you need to forget him.  You can start by never speaking his name again.”

“But –”

Ezra immediately stopped speaking as he felt a silent warning pass through their bond.  As new and weak as the bond was, Maul’s intent was more than clear enough for Ezra to understand.

“Yes, Master,” he said quietly.

“Good boy,” Maul said.  Through their bond, Ezra sensed Maul’s amusement at the spike of anger he felt at the words.

“Now,” Maul said, “we are going to try this again, and I expect to see you put in an actual effort this time.”

Ezra reached out through the Force, frantically trying to remember what Kanan had taught him about sensing attacks.  But they had barely scratched the surface of what Maul was asking him to do.  He could sense danger, but he couldn’t sense people’s movements precisely enough to stop them from attacking.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on his lack of experience.  He could hear Maul’s footsteps rushing toward him.  He only had seconds to figure out how to defend himself.

He took a stumbling step backwards, feeling the air in front of his face move as Maul’s fist swung through it, missing him by sheer luck.  Ezra gasped as Maul grabbed the front of his shirt, dragging him forward and throwing him to the floor.

“If you rely on only your physical senses, you will never be useful to me,” Maul said, his foot slamming viciously into Ezra’s side.  “You have abilities few others can even imagine, so use them.”

“I’m trying,” Ezra gasped, his hand pressing against the bruised side of his chest.

“And failing,” Maul growled.

Ezra reached out through the Force, a muddled shape of something taking form as it shot toward him.  He lost his mental grip on the feeling, but he’d felt just enough to know what to do.  He threw himself to the side, rolling out of the way of Maul’s metal foot before it could come crashing down on his spine.

“Better,” Maul said.

Ezra cried out as Maul grabbed his hair, pulling him to his feet.  He pushed out through the Force, trying to block the blow he was sure was about to land on his face.  He felt something resist his mental push for a split second before vanishing.  Before Ezra could figure out where the next blow would come from, Maul’s fist rammed into his stomach.  As Maul released him, Ezra fell to his knees, gasping for breath as he clutched at his abdomen.

“But not good enough.”

Ezra took a long, shuddering breath before pushing himself to his feet and reaching out through the Force once more, pushing past the boundaries of his mind, trying to form a picture of what was happening around him and hold onto it this time.

He would make it through this.  He’d survived beatings before, when he was alone on the streets.  He would survive this one.  This time, he had a reason to.

Chapter Text

Ezra shifted where he sat, his knees digging into the soft dirt beneath him.  As he reached out through the Force, he felt an echo in his head, forming itself into something that seemed almost solid, like translucent shadows taking the shapes of trees and brush and other things Ezra couldn’t recognize.  He could sense another shadow moving behind him as Maul paced, watching him.  That shadow faded in and out of Ezra’s mind, harder for him to keep track of when Maul was in motion.

Putting Maul out of his mind, he focused instead on the rest of his surroundings, straining to hold onto those shadows in his mind.  They wavered, fading slightly before coming back into focus, but they never disappeared.  That, at least, was an improvement.  Just days ago, his concentration would keep slipping and the vague images would vanish.  But Maul had forced him to keep practicing for hours on end, and as much as Ezra hated to admit it, it was beginning to pay off.  He could hold onto the feeling of the world around him better than he’d been able to when Maul had first brought him to this place, wherever it was.

Something nudged at the back of his mind, his instinctive sense of danger warning him just a second too late.  Something hard rammed into his back and pain burst through his body as an electric shock shot through him.  He cried out, doubling over, his hands striking the ground as the shadowed images he held in his mind vanished as if they were made of smoke.

As the object that had struck him was pulled away, he gasped for breath, struggling to hold himself up.  He let out a quiet groan as he straightened up, one hand reaching behind him and pressing against his back where Maul had struck him.

“Why?” Ezra growled, not bothering to ask anything further.

“Sensing your surroundings in the Force is a useless skill if you can only do it under perfect conditions,” Maul said, resuming his pacing behind Ezra.  “You need to learn to focus through any distraction, including pain.”

Ezra clenched his jaw, his teeth grinding against each other, as he reached out through the Force, trying to re-form the shadows in his mind.  He was already focusing through the constant pain from his scar, but by now he knew better than to point that out to Maul.

“Did the Jedi teach you nothing?” Maul asked, the disdain in his voice making Ezra’s hands curl into fists at his sides.

“He taught me plenty,” Ezra growled.  “And he didn’t need to electrocute me to do it.”

He tried to duck as he sensed Maul moving toward him, only for the shock prod to catch him on the shoulder, sending another jolt of pain shooting through his body.

“I thought you had learned by now to mind how you speak,” Maul said, that now-familiar tone in his voice that made rage burn in Ezra’s chest, as if Maul thought he was Ezra’s real teacher.

“I – I’m sorry, Master,” Ezra said, forcing the words out as he gasped for breath.  Just saying it made that rage burn even hotter, scorching the inside of his chest.  He hated having to play the part of Maul’s obedient apprentice.  He was certain Maul could see right through him, but wouldn’t take well to him dropping the act.

More than that, he was afraid that if he kept it up, it would stop becoming an act.  It had happened before.  During his first year on the streets, he’d needed to pretend to be hardened and bitter and unwilling to help others so no one would see him as being soft and an easy target.  It had worked until the day it stopped being pretend.

“Focus,” Maul snapped.

“I’m trying,” Ezra said, his voice breaking as his anger gave way to the same icy fear that had plagued him since Malachor.  He slumped over, his hands pressing into the dirt that he knelt in.  He suddenly felt as though a heavy weight had been dropped onto his back, crushing him until he could no longer hold himself up.

“I’m trying, Master,” Ezra said.  “I swear, I’m trying.”

“You are improving,” Maul said, the closest thing to praise he’d given Ezra since the day they’d come to this planet.  “But not enough.  If you want to stand a chance against the Inquisitors or the Sith, you need to stop resisting what I am trying to teach you.”

“I’m not –”

“Do not try to lie to me, apprentice,” Maul said.  Ezra flinched, his shoulders shooting up toward his ears.  The air seemed to grow thicker as Maul’s anger pressed in around him, as if it was trying to smother him.  “You still cling to the teachings of the Jedi.  You refuse to embrace your anger and use it to your advantage.”

“I’m –”

“Don’t tell me that you’re trying,” Maul growled.  “You aren’t.  You’re still resisting, still defying me.  If you want to learn how to survive without your sight, you need to listen.”

“I am trying,” Ezra said, his voice barely above a whisper.  And he was.  He was trying to learn what Maul was teaching him, but he felt paralyzed by his fear of becoming exactly what Maul wanted.

Ezra clenched his jaw as it began trembling.  Tears stung at his eyes as he hung his head, shaking as he hugged his arms around himself.

“Please,” he said, his voice breaking.  “Just let me go.  I just want to go home.”

A small, insistent voice in the back of his mind screamed at him not to do this.  He couldn’t give Maul the satisfaction of seeing him break down like this.  It was only going to get him hurt and give Maul something else to use to manipulate him.  But no matter how hard he tried to hold them back, the tears kept coming, slowly trailing down his cheeks until one finally dropped from his chin and onto the back of his hand pressed into the dirt below.  He bit down on his lower lip, trying and failing to hold back the whimper of fear that rose up in his throat.

“I want to go home,” he said, the words surging up and spilling out of him before he could even try to hold them back.  “Please, please just let me go home!  I don’t want this!  I just want to go home!”

Ezra barely realized that he was now shouting as he pressed his hands to his face, sobbing into them, his breath coming in short, sharp gasps of air.  He just wanted to run, to get as far away from Maul as he possibly could, but he couldn’t make himself move.

He just wanted Kanan.  He needed Kanan.  Kriff, he didn’t even know if Kanan had made it off of Malachor.  Kanan could be trapped there, or dead, and Ezra had no idea.  He was stuck here on some planet he didn’t even know the name of, drowning in his own fear as he was forced to learn from the man who’d burned his eyes out.

“Please!” he cried.  “Just let me g—”

Ezra screamed as pain coursed through his body.  The pain continued until he collapsed onto the ground, his fingers digging into the soft earth as the electric shock shot through him.  As suddenly as it had started, it was over, and he could breathe again.  He drew in a sharp gasp of air just before he felt the shock prod press against his back once more.

“No!”

The shock was shorter this time, but Ezra still cried out, clutching at the dirt beneath him.  He lay there, panting, tears still soaking the bandages over his eyes.  Every muscle in his body was aching now.  He never wanted to move again.

“Get up,” Maul hissed, his voice brimming with the same disappointment and disgust Ezra could feel swirling through the Force.

“No,” Ezra growled.  He was done listening to Maul.  There was no point.  He was sure that Maul didn’t believe his act of being a good, obedient apprentice, so what was the point in continuing it?

The Force wrenched at Ezra, pulling him off the ground.  Maul’s hand tangled in his hair, holding him up as he was forced back onto his knees.

“I had hoped that I wouldn’t need to waste time teaching you simple obedience,” Maul said, his voice too close to Ezra’s ear as he wrenched Ezra’s head back.  “But if that is what I need to do, then so be it.”

Ezra flinched as Maul released his grip on his hair, but the strike he was expecting didn’t come.  He reached out through the Force, grasping for those faint shadows he’d felt before, trying to get any sense of where Maul was and what he was going to do next.

“Stand up,” Maul said.

For a moment, Ezra just sat there, struggling to decide what to do.  It was such a small thing to fight over, but at the thought of following Maul’s order, raged bubbled up inside Ezra’s chest like water about to boil over.  He tried to remind himself that had sworn to do whatever it took to get home, but right now, he couldn’t care.  None of it would matter if he let Maul win.

The sharp crackling sound of the shock prod snapped Ezra out of his thoughts.  It didn’t touch his skin, but it hovered just behind his ear, a clear warning of what would happen if he didn’t comply.

Slowly, his hands curling into fists at his sides, Ezra got to his feet.  The crackle of electricity cut off and he could feel Maul’s sense of almost smug satisfaction emanating through the Force.  He clenched his fists even tighter, his nails digging into his skin as his teeth ground together.

“Sit down.”

Fury burst through Ezra’s chest like a bomb going off as he realized what Maul was doing.  He fought to rein it in, to keep it under control.  Mindlessly attacking Maul would only get him hurt, and he wasn’t going to let himself give in to the dark side over this.

“No,” he spat.

The moment the word left his lips, the shock prod was pressed to his back again.  It was only a short moment of contact, but the shock was enough to drive Ezra back to his knees.  He threw out a hand to stop himself from collapsing completely and drew in a ragged breath as he tried to curb his anger.  No matter what Maul did to him, he couldn’t let himself be goaded into doing something stupid.  No matter how angry he was, he was still unarmed, unsure of where he was, and kriffing blind.  He wouldn’t stand a chance against Maul right now.

“You are the reason we need to go through this, Ezra,” Maul said.  “Convince me that it isn’t necessary, and it will stop.  But until I can trust you to do as you’re told, you won't be learning how to live without your sight.  Do you understand?”

Remember why you’re doing this, Ezra thought, clenching his jaw so tightly he could feel it begin to creak.  You have to get home.

He knew Maul would never just let him go.  If he was going to get out of this, he had to learn whatever Maul could teach him about using the Force to “see.”  If that meant appeasing Maul, he knew he had to do it, no matter how humiliating it was.

“Yes,” he said, fighting to stop his voice from shaking.

He yelped as the shock prod was pressed against his back again, delivering a short, powerful burst of pain.

“Yes, what?” Maul asked.

“Yes, Master,” Ezra said, the words coming out as barely more than a whisper.

“That’s better,” Maul said.  “Now, stand up.”

Gritting his teeth, Ezra forced himself back to his feet.  He counted himself lucky that he’d only lost sight of his goal for a moment.  He wouldn’t let that happen again.  If this was what he had to do before he could find his way home, he would do it.  Getting away from Maul and back to his family was all that mattered.

“Sit.”

Ezra didn’t hesitate before lowering himself to his knees.

Chapter Text

Ezra shifted where he knelt on the stone floor of the room Maul had him staying in, wincing as the pressure against his knees lifted for a moment before setting back in.

“Hold still,” Maul said.

Ezra sighed and went still as Maul carefully wrapped the fresh bandages around his head, covering his eyes.  Ezra’s blood boiled at the feeling of Maul’s fingers in his hair as he secured the bandage in place.  He hated the fact that Maul was doing this for him, that he was this dependent on the man who’d taken his sight.  More than that, he hated the fact that he didn’t want Maul to pull away, that he knew the moment Maul was no longer touching him, he would be plunged back into that empty void.  Maul’s lessons were beginning to help, but his progress was slow.  More often than not, he still needed Maul’s touch to anchor him, to remind him that the rest of the world was still there.

“How much longer do these need to stay on?” Ezra asked.

“Three more days,” Maul said.

Ezra bit back a whimper as Maul’s hands pulled away.  He reached out through the Force, feeling those faint shadows begin to take shape.  He could sense Maul moving behind him, circling him until he was standing in front of him.

“Hand,” Maul said.

Ezra held out his hand and Maul placed another pill on his palm.  Ezra swallowed it without hesitating.  By now, he was fairly certain that the pills were the antibiotics Maul said they were.  Nothing had happened any of the times that he’d taken them before.

“That was the last one,” Maul said.  “And your wound is healing well.”

Ezra just nodded, not know what else to say.  It was strange, the way he felt almost detached from the wound itself, even as he spent almost every waking moment thinking about everything it had caused.  Even as the pain still radiated from the injury, Ezra didn’t have to think about it much.

Unable to do it himself, he’d let Maul care for the wound, and Maul didn’t seem particularly interested in making Ezra learn how to do it on his own.  Ezra couldn’t help but wonder if Maul was trying to make him more dependent even as he taught him how to use the Force to “see.”  If that was the case, there wasn’t much Ezra could do about it.

And in a strange way, the twice-daily ritual of changing the bandages had become almost comforting.  For one thing, it was the only time he could be reasonably sure that Maul wasn’t going to hurt him.  But more than that, it was a brief moment of peace and sameness in the chaos his life had been thrown into.  Whenever they were in this room, Ezra could always be sure of what was going to happen.  When they weren’t training, he was kept locked away in here, and it was becoming as familiar to him as his room on the Ghost.  When he was in this room, even if Maul was there with him, he almost felt safe.

He hated it.  He didn’t want to feel safe here.

“Come with me,” Maul said.

Ezra wordlessly got to his feet and followed Maul out of the room.  As they made their way through the corridors, Ezra instinctively reached out a hand into the empty air beside him before he stopped himself.  Maybe he could do it without touching the wall this time.

He drew in a long breath, holding it for a few seconds before releasing it, letting his awareness sink into the Force.  He reached out, not just focusing on Maul’s presence ahead of him, but spreading his mental reach out.  Those vague translucent shadows formed on either side of him, stretching out in front of him and behind him, showing him where the walls were.  Ahead, he could sense the gap in the shadows where the door was, the emptiness feeling like a jolt in Ezra’s stomach as if he’d missed a stair in the dark.  Beyond it lay a wider chamber; the entryway to the building they were in.  And still beyond that was the cave where they trained.  Ezra could sense all of it, laid out around him like a map being drawn in his mind.

When they reached the cave, Maul stopped in his tracks and held up a hand.  For a moment, Ezra was so elated that he was able to discern that small detail that he forgot to be afraid, forgot that a raised hand could mean a blow was coming.

“Wait here,” Maul said.

Ezra stayed put as Maul walked away, the sound of his footsteps against the ground echoing in the cavern.  Ezra followed Maul’s Force signature with his mind, willing that shadow to take a more distinctive shape.  When Maul stopped walking and turned to face him, Ezra swallowed nervously.  He never knew what they were going to be doing for training until it started.  But at least this time, Maul was too far away to hit him.

“The test is simple,” Maul said.  “All you need to do is use the Force to sense the obstacles in your path and move around them.  If you can find your way to me, you’ve passed the test.”

“What are they?” Ezra asked, his eyes darting around instinctively beneath the bandage on his face.

“Nothing that will hurt you.”

Ezra wasn’t sure if he could believe that, but he knew he couldn’t just stand there.  Maul would lose patience quickly and he didn’t want to find out what Maul would do when that happened.

He reached out through the Force, like he was spreading out a net with his mind.  Vague shapes began to form in front of him until they seemed almost solid.  A few of them were crates, he could tell.  Some with odd, irregular shapes – stones, maybe?

Ezra took a slow step forward, easing himself through a narrow gap between a crate and one of the irregularly shaped objects.  He hesitated for only a moment before continuing on, weaving through the obstacles Maul had placed in his path.  He stopped abruptly when something nudged the back of his mind, warning him of danger immediately ahead.  He honed his focus in on the space right in front of him, struggling to identify what he was sensing.  After a moment, he realized it was a tripwire, just above the height of his ankles.  He carefully stepped over it, pausing for a moment before he kept moving, focusing not just on the obstacles in front of him, but on Maul’s presence in the Force, letting it guide him like a beacon until he was standing in front of the man.

Finally, Maul’s hand rested on Ezra’s shoulder.  Ezra flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“Very good, apprentice,” Maul said.  Ezra tried to focus only on the feeling of Maul’s hand on his shoulder and ignore his words.

“Stay,” Maul said as he stepped away, the place where his hand had been suddenly feeling cold.  Ezra’s hand curled into a fist at his side.  He hated the feeling of emptiness that appeared whenever Maul stopped touching him, and he hated the fact that Maul knew how to use it to manipulate him.

Ezra jumped at the sound of stone scraping against stone.  He could sense movement behind him and quickly turned around, bracing himself for an attack.  After a moment, he realized the objects Maul had put in his path were moving, being rearranged into a new pattern.

The sound stopped, and a moment later, Ezra could feel the warmth of Maul standing beside him.

“Try again,” Maul said, his hand briefly resting on Ezra’s back before gently pushing him forward.

Ezra stepped forward after only a moment’s hesitation.  He’d done this once already.  He could do it again.

It was after his seventh pass through the obstacles that Ezra felt Maul’s hand on his shoulder again.

“You did very well,” Maul said.  “I think you’ve earned a reward.”

Ezra’s heart skipped a beat at Maul’s words.  He didn’t know what Maul meant by that, but he was certain it couldn’t be anything good.

“Hold out your hand.”

In spite of the fear creeping up in his chest, filling his lungs and smothering everything else, Ezra obeyed.  Maul placed something in Ezra’s hand and Ezra carefully felt the object, trying to determine what it was.  It was about the same size as the antibiotic pills Maul had been giving him, but it was a different shape, more of an oval than a circle.

“What is this?” he asked.

“One of the painkillers you were given when you were discharged,” Maul said.  “You’ve made such good progress that I believe you’ve earned one.”

Ezra hesitated, rolling the pill between his fingers.  He was finally being given a chance at relief from the constant pain he’d been in since Maul had brought him here, but he didn’t know if he could trust that it wasn’t a trap.

“Unless you don’t want it,” Maul said.

Ezra’s hand closed tightly around the pill.  If he refused it now, Maul might not offer it to him again.  Whatever the pill was, Ezra was certain by now that it wouldn’t kill him.  Maul had made it clear that he was going to keep Ezra alive.  He also didn’t know how Maul would react to him appearing ungrateful.

Bracing himself, Ezra put the pill in his mouth and swallowed it.  Within seconds, it began to take effect.  A sharp tingling feeling spread through his body, numbness quickly following in its wake.  Ezra hugged his arms around himself as he shivered, not from cold but from the strangeness of the feeling.

“I think you’re done with training for today,” Maul said.  He almost sounded amused, and Ezra didn’t understand why.

Maul’s hand closed around Ezra’s arm, guiding him forward.  After only a few steps, Ezra stumbled, falling to the ground at Maul’s feet.  He heard a soft chuckle from somewhere above him.

“Get up,” Maul said.  His voice sounded as if it was coming from miles away or travelling to Ezra’s ears through water.  His words didn’t sound harsh.  In fact, they almost sounded soft.

You’re high, Ezra reminded himself.  You’re imagining things.

“Ezra,” Maul said.

Ezra tried to get his arms under him and push himself up, but he didn’t want to move.  The ground felt so soft beneath him.  He could almost fall asleep here.

Ezra gasped as arms closed around him, lifting him off the ground.  He weakly squirmed, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Don’t worry, apprentice,” Maul said.  Ezra shuddered at the soothing tone in his voice, the same one he’d used when he’d taken Ezra off of Malachor.  “You’re safe.”

“No, I’m not,” Ezra muttered, unable to stop himself from speaking even though he knew his words could get him punished.

Maul didn’t respond as he continued carrying Ezra…wherever the heck he was carrying him.  Ezra’s head was so fogged up he couldn’t focus and didn’t have the slightest idea where they were going.  Panic surged up in his chest at the thought.  Maybe this really was a trap.  Maybe Maul was about to put him through something even worse than his past training sessions and needed him unable to run away.

“Please,” Ezra said, the word slurring as it tumbled out of his mouth.  “Jus’ lemme go.”

“Do not ask me that again, Ezra,” Maul said.  Ezra was almost comforted by the fact that his voice was harsh once again.

“I want my dad,” Ezra said.  The moment he realized he’d actually spoken the words out loud, he felt his cheeks grow hot with embarrassment.

“Your parents are dead,” Maul said, his voice once again gentle, as if Ezra needed reminding.

“Kanan’s not,” Ezra said.  Kriff, Bridger, what are you doing?

Ezra cried out as he was abruptly dropped, his heart hammering as he fell the few inches onto something soft.  Pressing his hand against the surface, he vaguely recognized it as the pallet in his room – no, it’s not your room, it’s your prison.

“He is not your father,” Maul said.  “He is not your master.  And he is not coming to rescue you.  It’s time for you to accept that.”

The sound of metal on stone met Ezra’s ears as Maul turned and walked away.  Seconds later, he heard the familiar scrape of the door closing and locking.

Ezra curled up on his side, instinctively reaching up to wipe away the tears that were forming in his eyes only to remember that the bandage was in his way.  He let his hand fall back to his side, suddenly drained of the will to move.  He should be angry.  He should be furious.  But he was just so tired that he didn’t have the strength to feel anything that strong.  And even as he tried to deny it, he couldn’t rid himself of the creeping worry that Maul might be right.  In spite of what he'd said, he didn’t know if Kanan was even alive, let alone if he was really coming to find him.

It was with that cold, terrifying thought that the fog swept through Ezra’s mind and he fell into the first peaceful sleep he’d had since Malachor.

Chapter Text

As Kanan entered the command center, his eyes locked onto Hera like a tractor beam onto a ship.  She had been speaking with Commander Sato, but the moment the door had opened, she had looked back, a weak smile crossing her face when she saw Kanan.

“You found something?” Kanan asked, his voice equally as weak.  From the moment Hera had commed him, he’d been fighting to keep the hope that had swelled up in his chest under control, in case this turned out to be nothing.  Ezra had been gone for a month now, and in spite of what Hera had said before, Kanan couldn’t help but think that if they were going to find some trace of him, it would have happened already.

“We might have,” Hera said, her hand sliding around Kanan’s when he reached her.  “Commander Sato was just telling me.”

“We received a report from one of our agents,” Sato said.  “About four weeks ago, a young boy was admitted to a medcenter on Telos with extensive burns to his face.”

In spite of his repeated warnings to himself not to get his hopes up, Kanan felt as though his heart had doubled in speed.

“Ezra?” he asked.

“We don’t know,” Sato said.  “The only information we have is that he was admitted and the wounds were apparently self-inflicted.”

“We have to go to Telos,” Kanan said.  “If Ezra’s there –”

“He was discharged three weeks ago,” Sato said, cutting Kanan off.  “If the boy was Ezra, he isn’t there anymore.”

A painful silence fell between the three of them at the commander’s words.  That faint spark of hope in Kanan’s chest began to fade.  Anything could have happened to Ezra in three weeks.  Maul could have taken him anywhere in the galaxy.  Or worse, his identity could have been discovered and the Empire could have him by now.

Hera’s hand squeezed tightly around Kanan’s for a moment as she looked up at him.  A sharp pang shot through Kanan’s chest at the look in her eyes.

“This is the only lead we have,” Hera said, turning her gaze back to Commander Sato.  “We need to follow it before the trail gets any colder.”

“Your team can investigate this,” Sato said with a nod.  “But do not do anything to reveal your presence on Telos to the Empire or compromise our agent.”

“Understood,” Hera said.  “Thank you, sir.”

As they left the command center together, Kanan pulled his hand from Hera’s so she wouldn’t feel him shaking.  The thought of Ezra being brought to a medcenter by Maul, being trapped there with no one willing to help him, made Kanan’s blood boil.  From what Sato had told them, Ezra had been in that medcenter a whole week, and no one had helped him.

If it was Ezra, Kanan reminded himself.  It might not be.

But still Kanan latched onto the thought that Ezra had been on Telos not long ago.  No matter how many times he repeated to himself that it could have been someone else, he couldn’t help but think that it must have been his padawan.  It wasn’t a feeling in the Force.  Ezra’s signature was still blocked from his mind.  He knew it was wishful thinking, but right now, wishful thinking was all he had.  One way or another, they would find out if that boy was Ezra, and if it was, they would bring him home.

“We need a plan,” Kanan said, trying to stop his voice from shaking as much as his hands were.  “We can't just storm the place and demand to see someone’s medical records.”

“Actually,” Hera said.  “I think we can do exactly that.”

The staff jarred in Ezra’s hands, irritating his already scraped-up palms, as he haphazardly blocked a strike from Maul.  The pressure of the other staff against his vanished, and Ezra quickly spotted the vague mental shadow of it swinging at him from the side.

He stumbled back, feeling the air in front of his chest moving as the staff passed in front of him.  As Maul lunged for him again, Ezra raised his weapon, preparing to block Maul’s strike at his head.  Maul quickly changed direction, too fast for Ezra to track, and within seconds Ezra found himself doubled over, gasping for breath as the staff rammed forward into his stomach.  As his knees buckled, another heavy blow hit his leg, driving Ezra to the ground.

Ezra’s staff clattered to the ground as he fell, his palms pressing against the cavern floor, grinding dirt and grit into his wounds.  He reached out, his right hand closing around the staff once more, and lunged to his feet.  He swung at Maul, aiming for his left side, but Maul dodged out of the way.  As Ezra stumbled past him, Maul raised a hand, and this time Ezra knew it was to call and end to the fight rather than to hit him.

“You’re improving,” Maul said.

Despite the bitter resentment that was now constantly burning in Ezra’s chest, a warm thread of pride worked its way to the surface.  He knew he was getting better.  Just a week ago, he never would have been able to hold his own as long as he just had.

“I had a good teacher,” Ezra said, the words coming out before he could fully think them through.  His heart sank the moment he realized what he’d said.  It was the sort of thing he would have said to Kanan.  For a moment, he’d almost felt like he was saying them to Kanan.  He’d meant Kanan.  Kanan was the one who’d first begun teaching him this, before he ever thought he’d need it.  Before Maul had made sure he would.

Ezra’s hands tightened around the staff, his teeth grinding together as he clenched his jaw.  Anger welled up inside him like it was about to spill out and destroy everything in its path.  He hated being here.  He hated Maul.  He hated the fact that he’d felt at ease enough to speak to him as if he were Kanan.

A bright, burning warning flashed through his mind and Ezra raised his staff once more, stopping Maul’s sudden attack.  He quickly dropped toward the ground, ducking out of the way of another attack, swinging his staff toward Maul’s side as he came up again.  He could sense Maul’s staff about to crack across his spine and twisted, blocking the strike.  His heart was pounding in his ears, his skin burning with rage.  He was glad Maul had attacked him again.  He wanted to hurt Maul.  He wanted to make him suffer for everything he’d done.

As Ezra shoved the end of his staff forward, aiming for where he was fairly certain Maul’s ribs were, throwing all of his fury and hatred behind the strike.  Just before his staff made contact, Maul’s hand darted out, grabbing it and twisting, wrenching the weapon from Ezra’s hand.  As Ezra stumbled, he lost his focus just long enough to miss Maul’s movement until it was too late to stop the man’s hand from slamming down on his back and knocking him to the ground.

Ezra stayed on his hands and knees, panting as he fought to slow down his racing heart.  He could still feel the anger coiling and thrashing inside him like it had a mind of its own and was desperate to get out, to hurt something.

He gasped as he felt a hand on his arm.  He tried to pull away, but Maul’s grip only tightened as he dragged Ezra back to his feet.  Ezra froze as he felt Maul’s free hand come up under his chin, cupping his face almost gently.  He wanted to pull away, but something was stopping him.  Some treacherous part of him that he hated wanted to lean into the touch.

“Do you see what happens when you channel your anger, Ezra?” Maul asked.  “You did better than you ever have before.”

Pride radiated across that poisonous bond, powerful enough that for a moment, it drowned out the fear that crawled up Ezra’s spine at Maul’s touch.  Ezra mentally shrank away from the feeling, throwing his strength behind his shields to block it out.  He took a step back, wrenching his arm out of Maul’s grip, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

“Ezra,” Maul said, sounding almost exasperated.  “You know that I’m right.  Your anger allowed you to focus in ways you never have before.  If you ever want to be able to survive on your own, you need to embrace it fully.”

Ezra said nothing, still reeling from the flood of conflicting emotions that had been tearing through his mind just moments before.  He almost wished the anger would come back.  At the very least, it made sense.  It was pure, uncomplicated rage and hatred.  It was something to hold onto, something to anchor him that wasn’t a touch that made his skin crawl at the same time that he craved it.

A deep, biting coldness settled in the pit of Ezra’s stomach.  That was exactly how Maul wanted him to feel.  It was exactly what Kanan had warned him against and tried to protect him from since that day on the asteroid.  He had promised himself that he would do what he had to do in order to get home, and if that meant pretending to become what Maul wanted, he would do it, but he would never really give in.  He wouldn’t turn his back on everything Kanan had taught him.

“You still have doubts,” Maul said.

“No,” Ezra said, fighting to keep his voice quiet, even submissive.

“Don’t lie to me, apprentice,” Maul said.  He didn’t raise his voice, but Ezra flinched anyway.  He could feel Maul pressing against his shields, trying to stop him from blocking the bond, trying to force his way in to see for himself the proof that Ezra was trying to deceive him.

“I’m sorry, Master,” Ezra said.  Better to back down now than to argue until Maul had had enough and forced his way past Ezra’s shields.

The moment he said it, that threatening pressure on his mind lifted.  Ezra bit back a sigh of relief, only for that sharp sense of danger to return as Maul’s hand rested on his shoulder.

“I am trying my best to help you, Ezra,” Maul said, his hand tightening around Ezra’s shoulder just enough to hurt.  “But you continue to resist me at every turn.”

Ezra bristled at Maul’s words.  His instinct was to deny that Maul was helping, to insist that Maul had no right to claim he was helping after he’d caused all of this in the first place.  But he knew that wasn’t true.  Maul was right; he had been improving.  His progress was slow, but he could feel the change as the vague shapes of his surroundings grew clearer the more he practiced.  He never would have been able to figure it out on his own, and he knew Maul wouldn’t let him forget that anytime soon.

“This is your reality now, Ezra,” Maul said, his voice harsh as his fingers dug into Ezra’s shoulders hard enough that Ezra let out a quiet gasp of pain.  “You will never regain your sight, and the only way you will ever learn to survive on your own without it is if you listen to me.”

“I – I know,” Ezra said, his voice breaking as his shoulders slumped.

He blinked rapidly, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to well up in his eyes.  He’d sworn to himself that he would never turn to the dark side, that he would resist whatever Maul did to try to force him to turn.  But for a moment, he had given into his anger, forgetting what Kanan had taught him.  For that one terrifying moment, he’d embraced exactly what Maul wanted him to become.

And he had been more focused that he had ever been since setting foot on this planet, just like Maul said.

“Pick up your staff,” Maul said, abruptly releasing his grip on Ezra’s shoulder.

Ezra reached out a hand, calling the weapon to his hand from where it lay a few feet away from him.  It had barely settled into his palm when Maul attacked.

Ezra dodged out of the way of Maul’s strike and squeezed his eyes shut.  Of course it didn’t make a difference in his sight, but it still helped him to focus.  He reached for the anger that had been burning through him just moments before.  He pulled it to the surface of his mind, letting it burst out of him in a vicious counterattack.

He knew his strike would land before it did.  He smiled as the sharp sound of the staff ramming against Maul’s ribs met his ears.

“That’s it,” Maul said.

The satisfaction in Maul's voice and the pride that flooded across their bond infuriated Ezra.  He gritted his teeth and attacked again.  Maul blocked his strike easily.  Ezra disengaged and slashed his staff through the air, aiming for his neck in a strike that would take his head off if they’d been using real lightsabers, only for Maul to dart out of the way just before it would have made contact.  With a wordless shout of rage, Ezra pushed out through the Force, throwing Maul away from him.  Maul crumpled to a heap on the ground and Ezra leapt at him.  As he landed beside Maul, he brought his staff swinging down through the air, not caring where or how hard he was about to hit.  If Maul wanted him to embrace his anger, then Maul was going to bear the brunt of it.  He deserved it.  He had used Ezra, manipulated him, blinded him, taken him away from his family.  If there was anyone who deserved to suffer –

Ezra could barely move his arms.  His staff had stopped in the air, held in place as Maul pushed back through the Force.

Ezra stumbled back a few steps as the Force shoved against him.  His hands began shaking as Maul got to his feet.  He’d done what Maul wanted; he’d embraced his anger, used it to his advantage, but now that it was over, he knew he’d gone too far.

A sharp whimper escaped his throat as the staff was wrenched from his hands and clattered to the ground behind Maul.  He stood perfectly still, waiting, desperately reaching out through the Force, trying to sense the tiniest hint of movement that would tell him how and where Maul would strike.

He jumped and flinched as he felt Maul’s hand rest on his shoulder, the touch unexpectedly gentle.

“Very good, Ezra,” Maul said.  Once again, Ezra could feel that sense of pride flooding across their bond, overwhelming his mind and drowning out his fear and his disgust with himself.  He knew Maul was doing it deliberately, trying to get Ezra to want his praise and approval.

He also knew that it was working.

Ezra pulled himself away from Maul’s touch, his heart pounding as his throat felt like it was beginning to close up.  He turned around and ran, bolting through the twisting corridors, his feet carrying him instinctively along the path Maul had led him down dozens of times now.

When he made it to his room – kriff, when did he start thinking of it that way? – he made sure the door was shut before he hugged his arms around himself, leaning back against the wall.

“No,” he muttered, digging his nails into his arms as hard as he could manage.  “No, no, no.”

Over and over, he repeated the promises he’d made to himself when Maul had brought him here.  He wouldn’t turn.  He would find his way home.  He would never forget what Kanan had taught him.

But it didn’t matter how many time he told himself any of it.

He was losing this fight.

He’d been losing it from the beginning.

Chapter Text

Sabine tugged at the high collar of her shirt as she fidgeted in the seat beside Kanan.

“You okay?” Kanan asked.  He wasn’t sure if Sabine was just trying to make a point or if she was genuinely uncomfortable.  Either way, he was sure she’d be fine once they actually reached the medcenter, but it never hurt to check.

“It’s like they designed these things to be as hot as possible,” Sabine muttered.

The moment she said it, Kanan felt as though his own shirt was sticking to his back.  He wasn’t sure where the rebellion had acquired the ISB uniforms that he and Sabine now wore, but if this plan could help them find Ezra, he wasn’t about to ask any questions.

“Do you really think it was him?” Sabine asked, finally going still and slumping back in her seat.

Kanan gave a small sigh as he stared through the viewport into the bright white tunnel of hyperspace.

“I don’t know,” he said.  He couldn’t – wouldn’t – let go of that small thread of hope until he saw definitive proof that the boy on Telos wasn’t Ezra, but the truth was that he had no idea.

A light flashed on the shuttle’s controls in front of him and a soft chime sounded.  Kanan gripped the steering yoke and prepared to take manual control of the shuttle again.

“About to come out of hyperspace,” he said.  “You ready?”

Sabine nodded, straightening her shoulders as she eased herself into the persona she’d adopted for this mission.  As the ship dropped out of hyperspace, Kanan plugged in the exact coordinates of the medcenter.  It wasn’t long before they had broken through the atmosphere and he was piloting the stolen Imperial shuttle onto a landing platform outside a large, sprawling building.

Kanan stood and Sabine fell into step beside him as they walked off of the ship and across the landing platform, toward one of the entrances to the medcenter.  Sabine was no longer fidgeting with her clothes, her jaw set and her eyes narrowed as they approached the building, projecting an aura of authority to rival any Imperial officer.  It was missions like this that made Kanan painfully aware of the fact that she had once been an Imperial cadet.

“Just remember not to punch anyone,” Kanan said with a small smile, a weak attempt to inject some levity into the situation.

“Only if you let me punch Maul when we find him,” Sabine said.

“Deal.”

They quickly made their way through the wide corridors of the medcenter, following the signs until they reached the administrative offices.  Kanan squared his shoulders and rapped on a door before entering without an invitation.

The man behind the desk inside the room looked up when they entered.  He looked like he was about to speak, but balked when he saw the two supposed ISB agents standing in his doorway.

“Orin Teff?” Kanan asked, repeating the name he’d read on the outside of the door as if he’d already known it before his arrival.

“Yes,” the man said, a slight nervous hitch to his voice.  “How can I help you?”

“I’m Agent Kallus,” Kanan said.  “This is Agent Talla.  We’re investigating a missing person and we believe he may have been brought to this medcenter a month ago.”

“I didn’t think ISB investigated missing persons cases,” Teff said.

“We do when they involve suspected traitors to the Empire,” Sabine said.

The atmosphere in the room changed abruptly.  Teff straightened up, his eyes darting around the room as he shifted nervously.

“The patient was admitted a month ago,” Kanan said.  “Discharged after one week.  Human, sixteen years old, with severe self-inflicted burns to his face.”

He took one slow step forward, drawing himself up to his full height.

“You are going to give us access to all of his medical records,” he said.  “And we need to speak to everyone involved in his treatment.”

“Do you have the patient’s name?” Teff asked.  Kanan couldn’t tell if he was stalling for time or not.

“His real name is Dev Morgan,” Kanan said.  “It's likely he was admitted under an alias.”

Kanan watched, giving Teff a cold, hard stare as the man quickly entered some information into a datapad sitting on his desk.

“We have his name as Kal Raeth,” Teff said after a moment.  “Dr. Rhade was in charge of his treatment, but he’s out today.  The only member of his treatment team who’s on shift right now is a nurse, Sena Kenten.”

Kanan removed a datacard from his pocket and held it out to Teff.

“Copy all of his records for us,” he said.  “And then we’ll need to speak to Sena Kenten.”

“Of course.”

Kanan could feel Sabine’s anger burning in the pit of her stomach as she paced around the break room where they were waiting for Sena Kenten.  His own anger burned alongside hers as he watched her.  They still didn’t have confirmation that the boy who’d been admitted here was really Ezra, but Kanan had a strange feeling, one he couldn’t describe as good or bad, that told him they were heading in the right direction.  There were answers here.  He just needed to find them.

The door opened and a young human woman entered the room.  Sabine stopped pacing and stepped up beside Kanan.  He didn’t need to look to feel the bitter expression on Sabine’s face.

“You’re Sena Kenten?” Kanan asked.

“I am,” the woman said.

“Have a seat,” Kanan said, nodding to a chair beside a small table.  He could feel the sudden crawling nervousness that crept through Sena’s mind as she sat down.

“Is there a problem, agent…” she trailed off, leaving room for him to give her his name.

“Kallus,” he said.  “This is my colleague, Agent Talla.  We need to ask you a few questions about a patient you treated a month ago.”

Sena nodded.

“Anything I can do to help,” she said.

“A teenage human boy was admitted with burns to his face,” Kanan said.  “On his eyes.  You would have known him by the name Kal Raeth.”

“I remember him,” Sena said.  She almost sounded haunted by the memory.  “Poor kid.”

“We need to make sure he’s who we’re looking for,” Kanan said.  “What did he look like?”

“Human, like you said,” Sena said.  “Brown skin, black hair down to his shoulders.  He had a scar on one of his cheeks, I can't remember which side.  And you know about the burns on his eyes.”

“How did he get here?” Sabine asked.

“His guardian brought him in,” Sena said, her eyes darting quickly between Kanan and Sabine.

“His guardian?” Kanan asked.

Sena nodded.

“Almir Raeth,” she said.  “A Zabrak with black tattoos.”

Kanan looked over at Sabine, whose eyes had widened slightly, fury burning behind them.  He gave her a small nod, letting her know that he would take it from here.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about both of them,” he said, turning his attention back to Sena.

“Kal’s guardian told us he’d been having a prolonged psychotic episode,” Sena said.  “He got ahold of a vibroblade and tried to gouge his own eyes out.  The damage was too extensive to save his sight.”

Kanan clasped his hands together behind his back to hide the fact that they were shaking.  That anger that burned in the pit of his stomach coiled up into his chest.  Hadn’t anyone questioned what Maul had told them?

“Poor kid,” Sena said.  “He was out of his mind.  He was convinced he’d been kidnapped and his guardian was going to hurt him.”

“He told you he was kidnapped?” Kanan asked, his voice cold.

“Yes,” Sena said with a nod.  “Like I said, he was delusional.  He had a history of –”

“He was kidnapped,” Kanan snapped, cutting her off.  “The man who brought him in here abducted him.  Did none of you think there was something wrong?”

“We didn’t – we thought…” Sena trailed off helplessly, her eyes widening at Kanan’s words.

“You heard the word ‘psychotic’ and thought you didn’t need to ask any more questions,” Sabine said, her voice just as cold as Kanan’s.

“That’s not what –”

“Did either of them say anything to indicate where they were going when he was discharged?” Kanan asked, cutting her off.  He wasn’t willing to listen to whatever excuses she was going to make.

“No,” Sena said, quickly shaking her head.  “I’m sorry, they didn’t –”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice breaking.  The anxiety Kanan had sensed in her before had grown into fully-realized fear, and Kanan couldn’t bring himself to care.  Ezra had been here just weeks ago, he’d tried to reach out for help, and no one had listened.  Kanan couldn’t even begin to imagine just how scared the kid must have been, trapped here with no one believing him, being held prisoner by Maul in plain sight of any number of people who should have helped him.

Kanan looked back at Sabine, whose hands hand curled into fists at her sides as she stared down at Sena.

“Let’s go,” he said.  “We have what we need.”

He stalked toward the door, Sabine following close behind him.  When they reached the door, Sabine stopped and turned back, glaring at Sena once again.

“You’re lucky we don’t arrest you as an accomplice,” she said before following Kanan into the corridor.

As the door closed behind them, Kanan put a hand on Sabine’s shoulder, trying to simultaneously comfort her and calm her down.

“A little much, don’t you think?” he asked, keeping his voice quiet to stop anyone who might pass by from overhearing.

“I don’t care,” Sabine muttered, shrugging Kanan’s hand off of her shoulder.  “They could’ve saved him, and they didn’t.”

“I know,” Kanan said.  “But we will.”

Ezra could sense Maul’s presence drawing closer.  He drew in a long, deep breath, focusing on that burning core of anger buried deep in his chest.  He prodded at it like he was stoking a fire, drawing on the feeling as he reached out through the Force, stretching out past the usual boundaries of his ability to “see” in his mind.  He smiled to himself as the translucent shadow of Maul took shape in his mind.  He really was improving, and he was starting to give up on reminding himself that he should be ashamed to admit it.

When Maul reached the door, Ezra instinctively shrank back into the corner he was sitting in, pulling his knees tighter against his chest.  The door opened and Maul stood there for a moment, watching him silently.  Ezra didn’t reach out.  He didn’t want to know what was going through Maul’s head.

“Get up,” Maul said.

Ezra immediately got to his feet, silently following as Maul turned and left the room, leading him down the twisting corridors.  Ezra still didn’t know where they were, but he was beginning to get a more detailed sense of this place.  It was a compound or keep of some kind, with walls and floors made of stone rather than durasteel or duracrete.  It was set deep into a large cave, with water surrounding the different branches of buildings carved from the rock.

When he and Maul exited the building and reached the cave, a strange sound met Ezra’s ears.  It was a sharp, panicked screeching, like an injured or cornered animal.

“What’s that sound?” Ezra asked, tilting his head as he tried to discern the direction it was coming from.

He jumped at the feeling of Maul’s hand on his shoulder.  He hadn’t been expecting the touch.  Even as using the Force to perceive his surroundings got easier, it wasn’t second nature.  He couldn’t just sense things without effort the way he had once been able to see.

“I’m sure you can figure that out for yourself,” Maul said, his hand tightening around Ezra’s shoulder in a way that was almost encouraging.

Ezra reached out, focusing on the vague shape that was forming in his mind’s eye.  Long bars intersecting each other, forming a cube.  A cage.  Inside it was a frantic animal, scratching at the ground beneath the cage.  Ezra didn’t know what the creature was called, but he’d sensed them when Maul had taken him out of the cave for training.

“Why is it here?” Ezra asked.

“You have progressed far enough that I think you’re ready to learn a new skill,” Maul said.  “It is a technique rarely used anymore.  The Jedi found it…distasteful, and while the Sith spent generations in hiding, using it wasn’t practical.  You, however, will find it useful.”

Ezra’s stomach churned at Maul’s words.  He had no idea what Maul was expecting him to do, but he knew if it was something the Jedi wouldn’t do and it involved a trapped animal, it couldn’t be anything good.  Even worse was the fear of what would happen if he failed to do what Maul wanted.  The more progress he made, the less patient Maul was with him when he struggled.

“I am going to teach you how to see through someone else’s eyes.”

Something in the pit of Ezra’s stomach went cold.  What Maul was suggesting sounded wrong on a level so fundamental that Ezra couldn’t even begin to describe it.

And he knew that Maul wasn’t going to let him refuse.

“Master,” he said, his voice shaking, “I don’t think I’m ready.”

“I don’t remember asking for you opinion,” Maul said, his grip on Ezra’s shoulder tightening, going from encouragement to a threat within seconds.

“I’m sorry, Master,” Ezra muttered, not bothering to hide how bitter he felt saying the words.

“In order for this to work,” Maul said, removing his hand from Ezra’s shoulder and beginning his customary pacing, “you need to take control.  You must override its will with yours until it cannot stop you from using its eyes to see.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” Ezra said with a small nod.

“Good,” Maul said.  “Now, begin.”

Ezra swallowed nervously before he reached out through the Force.  Finding the animal was easy, as was touching its mind, letting its consciousness mingle with his own.  Kanan had always told him he had a gift for connection and could reach into another being’s mind much easier than most Force sensitives, even fully trained Jedi.  The creature calmed a little when Ezra brushed up against its mind, but he could still sense its fear and confusion.

“No,” he muttered, pulling back from the creature’s mind.  “I – I can't.”

“Ezra,” Maul said, a warning in his voice.  “We have been through this already.  You need to –”

“I have been listening to you,” Ezra said.  “I have, but this…this isn’t right.  It’s not –”

His words were cut off by a cry of pain as Maul grabbed his arm, twisting it up behind his back and forcing him to his knees.

“Did you just interrupt your master?” Maul growled, wrenching Ezra’s arm back hard enough that he could feel his shoulder straining.

“I – I’m sorry,” Ezra gasped, not daring to move as Maul applied pressure to his arm.

“I am growing tired of your hesitation, Ezra,” Maul said.  “You are my apprentice now.  You were never meant to be a Jedi, and you must leave their weakness behind if you are ever going to make progress with me.”

Ezra whimpered as Maul applied more pressure, straining Ezra’s shoulder so much he could almost hear it creaking.

“Now,” Maul said, “do as you’re told.”

“Master –”

Maul wrenched back on Ezra’s arm and a loud crack met Ezra’s ears as he felt his shoulder break free from its socket.  He screamed, his head spinning from the pain as he struggled to break out of Maul’s grip.

“Do it, Ezra,” Maul hissed.  “Or I dislocate the other one, too.”

Tears welled up in Ezra’s eyes as he reached out through the Force once more.  He wrapped his mind around the animal’s presence, gently cradling it for a moment, trying to soothe it and wordlessly apologize, even though he didn’t know if the creature could understand.

Maul’s hand closed around Ezra’s uninjured shoulder, silently warning him that his threat wasn’t an empty one.

Ezra reacted instinctively, stabbing his mental claws into the creature’s mind.  The creature hissed and for a moment, they fought for control, the creature trying to force him out as Ezra tried desperately to focus through the pain and take over.

It didn’t take long for Ezra to overpower the creature.  Maul appeared to sense when he had, releasing his painful grip on Ezra who let out a quiet sigh of relief.

“Now,” Maul said, “make it open its mind to you completely.  Find its sight and take it for yourself.”

Ezra didn’t have the faintest idea how to do what Maul was saying, but sheer self-preservation instinct drove him forward as he frantically clawed through the animal’s mind.  The creature was more cooperative now, letting Ezra search through its mind until found what he was looking for.

I’m sorry, he thought as he let himself sink deeper into the creature’s mind.

It wasn’t like seeing with his eyes.

It was like an image being projected into his mind, more detailed and vivid than those shadows he “saw” on his own would ever be.  He could see the bars of the cage in front of him and forced the animal to move forward to see between them.

The cave was dark, but the water almost seemed to glow, giving off its own eerie light.

Ezra nudged at the creature’s mind until it turned around, facing him and Maul.  The bottom dropped out of his stomach at the sight of the scar on his face.  It crossed over his eyes, leaving raw, reddened skin behind.  The sight of himself on his knees, his right arm hanging limply at his side, Maul standing over him, made him nauseous.

With the abruptness of his legs being kicked out from under him, Ezra fell away from the animal’s mind.  He collapsed to the ground with a groan, exhaustion suddenly radiating through his body.

“Very good, apprentice,” Maul said, kneeling down beside him and gently resting a hand on the back of Ezra’s head.

“Wh-what happened?” Ezra asked, barely able to get the words out.

“You can't stay that deep in another being’s mind for long,” Maul said.  “Holding onto control drains even someone as powerful as you.”

Ezra felt hands pulling him up off the ground and it took him a moment to realize that Maul was lifting him into his arms, carrying him like a child.

“Don’t,” Ezra muttered, though he didn’t have the strength to fight it.  He barely had the strength to speak.

“You won't be getting back to your room on your own,” Maul said.

Ezra said nothing more, his eyelids starting to droop as Maul carried him back through the corridors of the building.  He barely recognized where they were going until Maul was laying him down on the mat in the corner of his room.

“Hold still,” Maul said.  As if he was going to try to move.

Seconds later, Ezra realized his arm was moving quickly, Maul’s hands gripping it tightly.  He didn’t have time to brace himself before pain shot through his shoulder and the joint was snapped back into place.  He let out a weak cry of pain as he pulled his arm from Maul’s grip, tears forming in his eyes once again.

He stiffened as he felt Maul’s hand rest on his forehead.

“I am proud of you, apprentice,” Maul said before he stood and left the room.

The door was already closed and Maul’s footsteps were fading down the corridor before Ezra realized that he should have hated hearing those words.

Chapter Text

Kanan stared blankly down at the holocron that rested on his palm.  He didn’t know if he could bring himself to open it, to spend hours more searching through its contents, staring at its star maps and grasping at the remaining threads of his bond with Ezra, only to come up empty again.  If the holocron held the answers he was looking for, wouldn’t he have found them by now?

But there was no other option.  The staff at the medcenter had no idea where Ezra and Maul had gone after they’d left, and there was no way to track them from Telos.  Sabine had half-heartedly suggested plotting the trajectory of every ship that had left Telos the day Ezra had been discharged, but they all knew that would leave them with too many possibilities.  They would never find Ezra that way.

Kanan focused on the holocron, nudging at it until the corners began to twist open.  As the light within it began to glow, Kanan pulled back, letting out a low growl of frustration as he tossed the holocron onto the bunk beside him.  It was useless.  He was useless.  His padawan – his son – was lost somewhere out in the galaxy, trapped with a murderous Sith who could be doing anything to him right now, and all Kanan could do was sit here and search through an old relic that he knew held no answers.

It was hopeless.  He wasn’t going to find Ezra this way.

Not for the first time, he wondered if there was any way to find Ezra.

When Ezra woke, Maul’s words from the day before echoed in his head.

I am proud of you, apprentice.

He shuddered even as he clung to those words.  He didn’t want to care about Maul’s approval, but the memory of him saying that made a soft feeling of warmth flutter through Ezra’s chest for just a moment.  No matter how much he hated it, it meant something to him that the person who was teaching him to live without his sight thought he was doing well, even though that person was the one who’d taken his sight in the first place.

Ezra curled up on his side, clutching his blanket around him.  He had promised himself over and over that he would escape, that he would only do what Maul said in order to get home.  He had fooled himself into thinking that he wasn’t in any real danger of turning as long as he focused on his real goal, but he was already beginning to rely on his anger too much, using it as a shortcut, doing exactly what Kanan had always warned him against.  And in spite of that, his progress was still painfully slow.  He wasn’t going to be escaping any time soon.  And even if he could, would Kanan even want him back now?

Tears began to sting at Ezra’s eyes and he pressed a hand over his mouth to muffle the sound of his crying.  He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t sense Maul’s presence until the door had already opened.  He quickly sat up, tossing the blanket aside before he got to his feet and wiped his hand across his eyes, wincing as he pressed too hard against the wound.

“I-I’m sorry, Master,” Ezra said

“It’s alright,” Maul said.  He stepped into the room, letting the door close behind him.  Ezra swallowed nervously, the deviation from their usual routine making his stomach buzz with anxiety.

“You have been making progress, Ezra,” Maul said.  “But that progress has been slow.  That is partially my own fault.  I’ve been too soft on you since I brought you here.”

Ezra shifted where he stood.  If Maul thought he was being soft, Ezra didn’t want to find out what harsh was.

“But after what I saw yesterday, I believe you’re ready to take your next step,” Maul said.

He removed something from his belt and it took Ezra a moment to realize that it was his own lightsaber.  Maul had had it this whole time.

“I’m not ready,” Ezra said quickly.  He knew perfectly well that if he tried to fight Maul with a live weapon, he was going to get hurt.

“We aren’t going to be sparring today,” Maul said.

There was a scrape of metal against metal as Maul opened the lightsaber up.  Ezra’s heart began hammering as Maul removed the kyber crystal that lay inside the weapon, dropping the rest of the weapon to the floor.

“When the Jedi build their weapons, they only use crystals that choose them,” Maul said, taking a step forward as his hand closed around Ezra’s crystal.  “Those who use the dark side use a different method.  We force our power into the crystals and bend them to our will.”

Ezra’s breath caught in his throat as he realized what it was Maul wanted him to do.

“It won't work,” he said, a slight tremor in his voice.  “That crystal did choose me.”

“It did,” Maul said.  “In doing so, it became bonded to you.  You can influence the crystal and it, in turn, can influence you.”

“What –”

“Making your crystal bleed is one of the ultimate tests for a student of the dark side,” Maul said, ignoring Ezra’s half-asked question.  “Because your crystal chose you, you cannot do it yourself.  But I can.”

“No,” Ezra gasped.  He had no way of knowing exactly what it would do to him, but he knew instinctively that he didn’t want it to happen, the same way a young child knew not to touch a hot stove despite not remembering being burned.

“This is for your own good, Ezra,” Maul said.

The Force felt like it was twisting around Ezra, shadows closing in around him and smothering him.  He barely registered the stinging pain in his palms as he collapsed to the floor, his head spinning as he curled in on himself, trying to make himself smaller and smaller to avoid being swallowed up by the shadows.

“S-stop!” Ezra cried.

Something was clawing at his skin, reaching through him to tear at his mind.  He felt like his bones were cracking under the pressure as something squeezed around him, crushing him until he could barely breathe.

Something inside him cracked, startling a quiet whimper from his throat, and everything stopped.

Something was wrong.  It was like some sticky substance, like a spider’s web, was clinging to him, inside and out.

Ezra pushed himself off of the floor and up onto his knees, gasping for breath.  A harsh buzzing filled his chest as that sticky, contaminated feeling spread through him like bugs crawling across his skin.

“Please,” he gasped, reaching out toward Maul, “just…just give it back.”

It was just a rock, he told himself.  It wasn’t like it was a person or a pet.  But Ezra couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that his crystal needed him, like it was crying out for him.

“Please,” he said again, his voice barely above a whisper.

Maul’s footsteps echoed through the room as he approached.  Ezra gasped as Maul roughly grabbed his wrist, placing the crystal on his palm.  Ezra’s fingers quickly closed around the crystal in case Maul tried to take it again.  As he pulled his hand back toward his chest, Maul’s grip only tightened.

“You will thank me for this one day,” Maul said.

He abruptly released Ezra, who flinched back, half-expecting another blow.  But it didn’t come.  Maul simply turned away and left the room, locking Ezra inside once again.

Ezra cradled the hand that held the crystal against his chest, his other hand brushing away the tears that slid down his cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, not caring that he was speaking to a rock.  “I’m sorry.  It’s okay.  You’ll be okay.”

The crystal didn’t feel any different physically, but Ezra could sense the change in it.  That broken feeling that had shot through him just before Maul stopped his attack was ten times worse inside the crystal.  Its spirit had been crushed, and Ezra’s had nearly gone with it.

Ezra drew his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them and curling into a tight ball in the corner he was huddled in.  He felt…infected, poisoned, like the shadows that had surrounded him had leeched into his veins.  Corrupting his crystal hadn’t been enough to corrupt him, not completely, but already Ezra knew it had changed something.

He was in trouble.  And this time, he didn’t know if he could get himself out of it.

Ezra stood up, wiping his eyes and clenching his fist around the crystal.  He couldn’t just sit here and wait for Maul to finish what he’d started, leading him down the path to the dark side until there was no turning back.  He’d promised himself he would do whatever it took to get home, and he was going to do exactly that.

Ezra crossed the room, pressing an ear to the door as he reached out through the Force, pushing himself as hard as he could as he let the vague shadows of the walls and doors around him form in his mind.  Once he was satisfied that Maul was nowhere near him, Ezra turned his focus to the lock.  It wasn’t very complex.  One quick push through the Force and it opened, letting Ezra slip out of the room and into the corridor.

He rushed through the corridors and out of the building as fast as he could, painfully aware that he was still moving much slower than he had before he’d lost his sight.  But that didn’t matter as long as he made it to his destination without Maul catching him.

Making his way through the cave was excruciating.  Every echo of his own footsteps, every disturbance in the water, every soft hiss of moving air sent his heart racing.  Telling himself that he would sense Maul approaching did nothing to calm his fear.

He hesitated when he reached the mouth of the cave.  He held his breath for a moment, listening intently.  Hearing no sign of Maul’s distinctive footsteps, he stepped forward into the open air.  Judging by the coolness of the air against his skin, night had already fallen.  That could only help him, giving him at least some cover of darkness.

Reaching out through the Force, he felt the shape of Maul’s ship form in his mind.  It wasn’t far.  With how much slower he was moving now, it would take maybe five minutes to get to it.  He was in no state to pilot the ship right now, but if he could send a transmission, Kanan and Hera might be able to track it and find out where he was.

Ezra let out a sigh of relief as he crept onto the ship.  He bolted for the cockpit, running his hands across the controls until he found what he was looking for.  It took a few tries, but finally he got it to the right frequency, a faint spark of hope igniting in his chest as the transmission was sent out.

This could all be over soon.

“Please answer,” he muttered.  “Please, please, please.”

The seconds dragged by, each one longer and more agonizing than the last.  Ezra waited, holding his breath, until a faint clank met his ears from somewhere behind him.  Before Ezra could register what the sound meant, there was a crackle of static as the faint hum of the transmitter cut off.

“Did you really think I wouldn’t know if you left?” Maul asked, his voice cutting through the silence like a knife’s blade.

Ezra gasped and clawed at his throat as he was wrenched off the floor and pulled back toward Maul.  Pain burst along his spine as he was slammed into the wall, the pressure around his throat lifting for a moment only to be replaced by Maul’s hand squeezing until he couldn’t breathe.

“I am disappointed, Ezra,” Maul said.  “I thought you had come to accept your new reality.”

His grip grew tighter as Ezra grabbed at his hand, trying to pry his fingers away.

“But I see you still need to learn your place.”

Chapter Text

Ezra cried out as Maul wrenched at his hair, dragging him down the corridor as he dug his heels against the floor in a futile attempt to resist.  There was a scrape of a door opening and Ezra was thrown to the floor, catching himself on his hands just before his forehead struck the stone.

He tried to push himself back to his feet only for Maul to grab his arm, yanking his sleeve down past his shoulder.  Something sharp pierced his skin and within seconds, a sickening, cold sensation was slithering through his veins, leaving numb emptiness in its wake.  As Maul’s presence faded from his mind, he reached out, only to find that he couldn’t sense anything.  Even the walls that enclosed the room didn’t take shape in his mind.  He could feel Maul’s hand around his arm, his fingers digging in hard enough to bruise, but he couldn’t sense the man’s presence.

He couldn’t even sense the cold that he’d felt permeating this whole planet since the moment he’d arrived here.

The Force itself was just gone.

A quiet whimper escaped Ezra’s throat as he tried to pull away from Maul’s grip.  Somehow, this was worse than the moment he’d been told he would never see again.  He felt hollowed out, like someone had reached inside of him and torn out the very essence of his being.

“Wh-what did you just give me?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“A Force suppressor,” Maul said, his voice cold.  “I chose to help you, boy.  If it weren’t for me, you never would have learned to take so much as one step on your own.  And still you tried to betray me.  I think a few days cut off from the Force will teach you your lesson.”

Ezra gasped as Maul released his arm and grabbed his chin, tilting his face up.

“You are nothing without me, Ezra,” Maul said.  “It’s time you learned that.”

“I –”

“Quiet,” Maul snapped.

Ezra fell silent immediately.  His skin crawled as Maul's other hand rested against his cheek.

“Don’t worry,” Maul said.  “This won't be permanent.”

Ezra let out a quiet whimper as pressure began building in his head.  It grew stronger and stronger until he screamed, wrenching himself out of Maul’s grip.  Searing pain shot through him like spikes being driven into the sides of his head as he collapsed to the floor, curling in on himself.  He pressed his hands against his ears, screaming until…

Until everything went quiet.

He was still screaming.  He could feel the vibrations and the burning in his throat.  He could feel himself shoving the air from his lungs as he howled in pain.

But he couldn’t hear it.

He couldn’t hear anything.

He lay there, curled in a ball on the floor, burning hot tears streaming down his cheeks as pain pounded inside his skull.

Blind.

Deaf.

The Force stripped away from him.

In too much pain to move.

Hands grabbed at him, stripping his clothes off and slamming him forward against the floor.  He tried to crawl away, only for a powerful grip in the Force to drag him back, the stone floor scraping roughly against his skin.

Something cracked across Ezra’s back, pliable but hard, like a belt or an electrowhip.  Ezra cried out as it struck him again, sending pain radiating through him.  With neither sound nor the Force, he had no way of knowing how fast each blow would come as they rained down on his back and legs.

“Stop!” he cried, or tried to.  He couldn’t even tell how loud his own voice was.  “Please!”

His plea was only met with another blow, harder than the last.  Ezra screamed and tried to drag himself forward again, only for Maul’s grip in the Force to tighten once more, pressing down on him and holding him in place against the floor.

Ezra was shaking, sheer terror overtaking his mind, crawling through his veins just like the Force suppressor had done.  The few seconds that passed between each strike were just as agonizing as the blows themselves.  For those brief moments, he had no way of knowing if Maul was still standing over him, if he’d left the room, or if he was preparing to do something worse.  Those seconds would drag out and drag out until whatever weapon Maul wielded cracked across Ezra’s skin again, forcing another soundless scream from his throat.

At long last, the pause between the blows drew out longer than the others.  Ezra held his breath, waiting for the next strike to come.  The skin on his back and legs was burning from the pain.  The beating had gone on for so long that some of the blood he could feel on his skin had already begun to dry.

Ezra cried out as Maul’s hand seized his hair once again, dragging him along the floor until he was thrown into a corner, his back striking the wall as he crumpled back to the floor.  Cold metal closed around his wrists as his hands were wrenched upward, secured to the wall just above his head.

Just as abruptly as Maul had grabbed him, he let go.  Ezra waited, shrinking back against the wall as he braced himself to be hit or grabbed or who knew what else once more.

But nothing happened.

Still he waited.  And still, nothing.

Ezra was shaking as the seconds dragged by into minutes, fear pulsing in his chest like a second heartbeat.

Finally, he spoke up, unable to hear his voice as he whispered “Master?”

He didn’t know what he expected to happen.  If Maul said anything, he wouldn’t be able to hear it.  But there was no strike to his face to silence him, no hand grabbing his hair and slamming his head back against the wall.  Nothing to indicate that Maul was still there.

Ezra’s heart hammered, the uncertainty making his stomach churn.  Maul could easily still be there, waiting until Ezra let his guard down before attacking again.  Or he could have left, abandoning Ezra here, restrained, alone, helpless.

“Master?” Ezra asked again, panic swelling up in his chest, wrapping around his throat.

Still nothing.

Ezra choked back a sob as he wrenched at the chains that bound his hands.  But they wouldn’t budge, and without the Force, he had no way to break free of them.

Hera gritted her teeth as she twisted the hydrospanner.  Of course the last bolt to be put back into place had turned out to be most stubborn one.

Finally satisfied that the steering yoke was calibrated just the way she wanted it, she stood up, clasping her hands behind her back and stretching her arms, letting her shoulders and back pop lightly as the tension eased from her muscles.

As she turned around, she saw the blinking light on the dashboard, signaling a missed transmission.  She narrowed her eyes slightly.  She would have heard it if the transmission had come through while she, Kanan, and Chopper had been doing repairs, which meant it must have happened earlier.  How had she not noticed it until now?

Hera hit the switch next to the light, only for the sound of static to meet her ears.

“That’s odd,” she muttered.

“Hmm?”

Kanan peered out from where he was crouched beneath the ship’s controls.  Hera couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang in her chest at the sight of the dark circles around his eyes and the sharp lines his face now held.  She knew she couldn’t look much better.  Neither of them had been sleeping much, they both had lost weight, and Kanan…he seemed almost hollow, like being separated from Ezra for so long was draining the life from him.

“Just a missed transmission,” she said, tearing her gaze away from her friend, not wanting him to see her staring.  “But there’s no message.”

Kanan stood up, crossing the cockpit until he stood in front of the transmitter.  He reached out, gently touching the dashboard as his eyes narrowed.

“We should trace it,” he said, his voice quiet.

“Do you really think it was him?” Hera asked.  She didn’t dare to let herself get her hopes up, not wanting to see them crushed like they were after Sabine and Kanan had returned from Telos.

“I don’t know,” Kanan said.  “I just have a feeling…”

He trailed off, still staring down at the transmitter.

“Chopper,” Hera said.  “See if you can trace that signal.”

You told me to rewire –

“Well, now I’m telling you to do this,” she said, cutting the astromech off.

She stepped back, letting Chopper through as he wheeled over to the transmitter and plugged into the socket beneath it.  Hera reached out, clutching Kanan’s hand in hers.

If his feeling was right, they were going to get their boy back.

Chapter Text

“How is this taking so karking long?” Sabine growled, dropping into a seat in the common room.  She had just returned from checking Chopper’s progress on tracing the signal in spite of Hera’s assurances that Chopper would comm her when he found something.

Sabine wasn’t the only one who was being impatient, Kanan noted.  Zeb had thoroughly cleaned his bo-rifle once a day for the past three days despite not using it during that time.  Hera had been spending hours at a time cooped up in the cockpit with Chopper, doing nothing but watching him, until the astromech had kicked her out, claiming that she was distracting him, though Kanan knew that wasn’t the case.  He wasn’t sure how much capacity Chopper really had for as sentient a feeling as worry, but he was certainly experiencing the closest thing he could to it.

As for himself, Kanan was itching for action.  He found himself on edge constantly, listening for the quietest chirp of Hera’s commlink, or the faintest hint of Chopper rolling his way from the cockpit to the nearest crewmember.  The only way to stop it was to shut himself away in his room and meditate, trying to release the anger and fear that wound in his chest like a tightly coiled spring.  But he couldn’t always do that.  Sometimes, like now, he needed to be with his crew, sitting the same anxious, anticipatory vigil that they did.

When Hera’s commlink went off, the room went still.  Kanan stared at Hera, certain that Sabine and Zeb were doing the same, as she answered.  He could only understand a few of Chopper’s words, but from the smile that crossed Hera’s face, he knew what had happened before she spoke.

“He found the source,” she said.  “It looks like the transmission came from a planet in the Quelii Sector.  Some place called Dathomir.”

“But we don’t know for sure that it was Ezra,” Zeb said, sounding as though he hoped someone would correct him.

“We don’t,” Kanan said.  “So I’m going to check it out.  Alone.”

“No, you’re not,” Hera said.

“If Ezra’s there, then Maul probably is, too,” Kanan said.  “He’s dangerous, and I’m not putting any of you in his way.”

“That’s why you can't just go alone,” Sabine said, straightening up in her chair and glaring at him.

“Sabine, we’re not talking about some trigger-happy Imps,” Kanan said.  “We’re talking about a Sith.  There’s a reason the Jedi were the ones to deal with them before.”

“There were also a lot more Jedi before,” Zeb said.

It stung, but Kanan knew his friend had a point.  During the ancient wars with the Sith, a dozen Jedi might have been sent to deal with someone like Maul.  Now, it was just him.  Him and his padawan, assuming Ezra was in any condition to fight.

“I’m going with you,” Hera said, her voice firm.  “You’re a member of my crew and I’m not going to let you go off on a mission like this alone.”

Kanan wanted to argue, but he couldn’t deny that part of him did want Hera beside him, even if he had his doubts.

“If she’s going –”

“No,” Kanan said, cutting Sabine off.  “You two are staying here.  It’ll be just me and Hera.”

Hera nodded as she stood up.

“Let’s gear up,” she said.  “One way or another, we’re bringing Ezra home.”

Ezra flinched as he felt Maul’s hand touch his face.  Knowing what was coming, he opened his mouth, gulping down the water that was poured into it.  For days now, he had been locked in this room, his arms shackled to the wall, with Maul coming in occasionally to give him water and injections of Force suppressors.

He whimpered as he felt Maul’s hand on his knee, pinning his leg down before a needle was jammed into his thigh.  He barely registered the cold sensation that slithered through his veins.  He’d become used to it by now.

He flinched again as the feeling of Maul’s hand disappeared from his skin.  In so many ways, Maul not touching him was worse than Maul hurting him.

“Wait,” he muttered, barely aware of whether he was really speaking or not.

Pain burst across his face as Maul struck him hard enough to knock his head back against the wall behind him.  Ezra cried out, shrinking back into the corner as tears stung at his eyes.  He hated himself for even thinking it, but at least the burning feeling from the impact was something to feel.

“Master,” he gasped.  “Please.  I’m sorry.  Just –”

He whimpered as Maul grabbed his hair, wrenching his head back.  There was a twisting feeling in Ezra’s stomach as he realized he didn’t want Maul to let go.  Even this was better than the empty nothingness that he was left in when Maul stopped touching him.

Something was roughly shoved against the lower half of Ezra’s face.  Cold, made of metal, edges digging into his skin.  Maul released his hair, locking what Ezra now understood to be some kind of muzzle behind his head.  Then, just as abruptly as it had started, the touch stopped once more.

Please don’t go, Ezra thought, pulling at his chains once again.  Please don’t leave me.  Please.

Tears trickled down his face, pooling at the edges of the muzzle before slowly making their way beneath it.

He never should have tried to contact the Ghost.  If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be here now, shackled to a wall, alone, the smell of his own blood and waste surrounding him, his body aching from his beating and his arms being chained over his head.  He had acted without thinking things through and landed himself in this situation.

All of this was his own kriffing fault.

No wonder Kanan wasn’t looking for him.

Kanan triple-checked to make sure his lightsaber and his blaster were securely on his belt before he stepped off of the Phantom.  Beside him, Hera already had her blaster out, her head swiveling around as she scanned the area around them.  So far, the only signs of life were the animals they could hear in the forest, but that did nothing to reassure Kanan that there was no danger.  Not when he could feel a cold, clawing darkness surrounding him, emanating from the cave ahead of them.

When they’d reached the planet, Kanan had guided Hera, following the pull of the darkness like a beacon, knowing that if Maul had brought Ezra here, he had likely brought him to the concentration of power that Kanan had sensed the moment they hit the atmosphere.

Kanan reached out through the Force, searching, feeling his way through the darkness for any hint of Ezra’s presence.

There was none.

“I can't feel him,” he said, keeping his voice quiet.

“He isn’t here?” Hera asked.

“I don’t know,” Kanan said.  “But…Maul.  He’s here.  I can sense him.”

He removed his lightsaber from his belt, letting the cool metal settle into its natural place in his hand.  He didn’t ignite the blade yet, but he wanted his weapon ready, just in case.

“If he’s here, Ezra must be, too,” he said.  “Or he knows where Ezra is.”

The two of them fell into step beside each other as they made their way toward the cave, moving quickly but quietly, not wanting to attract Maul’s attention before they had to.  When they entered the cave, Kanan stopped in his tracks, holding out a hand to signal Hera to do the same.

“He’s here,” he said quietly.  “He’s close.”

“Did you think a Jedi could set foot on this planet without my noticing?” a cold voice said.

Kanan glanced around, trying to determine which direction the voice was coming from.  His question was answered a moment later as Maul emerged from the shadows ahead of them.

“Where is Ezra?” Kanan growled, igniting his lightsaber.

“My apprentice’s whereabouts are not your concern,” Maul said, igniting the blades of his own weapon.

Maul’s gaze shifted to where Hera stood, her blaster raised.  Before Kanan could react, Maul reached out, wrenching Hera’s blaster from her hand and tossing it aside.

“Now that your friend cannot interfere,” Maul said, “I think it’s time I finished what I started on Malachor.”

Maul lunged forward, his blade cutting through the air.  As Kanan raised his weapon to defend himself, stepping forward to put himself between Maul and Hera, he felt a tug at his waist.  There was the sharp sound of a blaster going off and a blue ring of light struck Maul, who crumpled to the ground.

Kanan quickly looked over at Hera, who stood with his blaster in her hand, her eyes narrowed with fury.  As Kanan watched, she lowered the weapon, removing a pair of binders from her belt.

“Those won't hold him for long,” Kanan said, finally lowering his lightsaber and switching the blade off.

“They don’t need to,” Hera said, crouching down beside Maul and securing his hands behind his back.  “We just need enough time to find Ezra.”

“Enough time to find Ezra” was shaping up to be longer than either of them had thought.  Knowing Maul wouldn’t stay knocked out forever, Kanan had suggested they split up as they searched the fortress inside the cave.  So far, he hadn’t received a comm from Hera, and he’d found no reason to comm her, either.

He still couldn’t sense Ezra’s presence anywhere.  Even their bond had been reduced to the faintest thread, just barely attached to Kanan’s mind.  All he could tell was that Ezra was still alive, somewhere.

Kanan sighed softly as he reached another door.  He’d lost count of how many doors he’d opened only to find no sign of his padawan.  He was certain that this one wouldn’t be any different, but he had no choice but to check.

Kanan pushed the door open and froze.

Ezra was huddled in a corner, his knees pulled up to his chest.  He’d been stripped naked, his skin covered in bruises and welts.  His wrists were in cuffs, their short chains bolted to the wall above his head.  A metal contraption that looked almost like a muzzle was clamped over the lower half of his face.  And across his face, covering his eyes, was a dark scar, just barely healed.

Shaking himself out of his shock, Kanan rushed into the room, dropping to the floor in front of Ezra.

“It’s okay, kid,” he said.  “I’m here.  It’s okay.”

He reached out through the Force, opening the locks on the muzzle and the shackles.  Ezra whimpered as Kanan pulled the muzzle away and shrank back, clutching his hands against his chest.

“It’s alright,” Kanan said.

Kanan wrapped his arms around Ezra, carefully lifting the kid into his lap.  Tears were beginning to sting at his eyes as he held Ezra against his chest and kissed his forehead.

Ezra cried out, clawing at Kanan’s arms as he frantically tried to pull away.

“No!” Ezra said, the word coming out in a strangled cry.  “No!  Let go!”

Kanan released his hold on the kid, who dragged himself back against the wall, huddling against it as tears ran down his cheeks.

“Ezra,” Kanan said.  “It’s me.  It’s okay.  You’re safe.  I’m taking you home.”

Ezra didn’t respond.  He stayed curled against the wall, shaking.

“I’m sorry, Master,” he said, the rushed words barely more than a whisper.  “I’m sorry.  P-please, don’t.”

“Ezra –”

“Just let me out,” Ezra said.  “I-I’m sorry.  I – I won't do it again.”

Something was wrong.  Something was very wrong and as Ezra pressed himself as far against the wall as he could, Kanan began to suspect he knew what it was.

“Ezra,” he said, a tremor working its way into his voice.  “Can you hear me?”

Ezra said nothing.

“Ezra, if you can hear me, just say something,” Kanan said, the words tumbling out quickly as his heart began hammering.  “Anything.  Just let me know you can hear me.”

Still nothing.

Ezra couldn’t hear him.

And, Kanan realized with a start, if he couldn’t sense Ezra in the Force, Ezra probably couldn’t sense him, either.

Kriff.

Kanan grabbed his commlink, already set to their crew’s frequency.

“Hera,” he said.  “I found Ezra.  But he’s – it’s bad.  Just get the Phantom ready to fly.  We need to get him out of here.”

Glancing around the room, he spotted Ezra’s clothes discarded on the floor.  He pulled them to him before reaching out and gently putting a hand on Ezra’s shoulder.  Guilt coiled in Kanan’s stomach as the kid flinched and whimpered again, but he had to get Ezra out of here fast.  There was no telling how much time they had before Maul woke up.

With his other hand on Ezra’s back, he gently guided the kid away from the wall.  Ezra resisted at first, but at Kanan’s insistence, he crawled forward.  Kanan picked up Ezra’s clothes and pressed them into the kid’s hands, trying to communicate what was going on.  Ezra was still shaking as Kanan helped him into his clothes and guided him to his feet.

Kanan reached out, his hands framing Ezra’s face, willing the kid to understand who he was and what was happening.  But it was useless.  Ezra stood there, his eyes squeezed shut, his shoulders high, as if he was expecting a blow.

He took hold of Ezra’s hand, trying to guide him out of the room.  But with the first step Ezra took, his knees buckled, and he collapsed with a weak, pained cry.  Kanan crouched down beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder.  He should have realized.  Depending on how long Ezra had remained in one position, his legs could have cramped up so badly he wouldn’t be able to walk on his own.

Only sparing a few seconds to feel guilty for how much this might scare the kid, Kanan gathered Ezra into his arms before he straightened up and carried him out of the room.  Ezra whimpered even as he nestled against Kanan’s chest.

“It’s okay,” Kanan said again, his voice soft.  “I’ve got you.  I promise, you’re safe.”

A few painful, silent minutes passed as Kanan carried Ezra through the corridors of the fortress.  Then he heard it.  Ezra’s voice, so small, so terrified, that hearing it felt like Kanan had been punched in the gut.

“Kanan?”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice breaking.  “It’s me.  I’m here.”

“Not real,” Ezra whispered.  “You’re not real.”

“I am,” Kanan said, not caring that the kid couldn't hear him.  “I’m real.  I’m taking you home.”

The person carrying Ezra – Maul, it had to be Maul – set him down gently.  Ezra dragged himself away from those hands until he felt the wall at his back.  He rested his head against the cool metal of the floor.

Metal.  Not stone.

“Wh-where am I?” he asked, the question coming out instinctively even though he knew he wouldn’t hear Maul’s answer.

The floor beneath him began to move, rocking gently.  Ezra pressed one hand against it, feeling the vibrations against his skin.  His heart sped up as he realized that he was on a ship.  Where was Maul taking him now?

A hand was pressed against Ezra’s cheek.  It was rough, callused, but it wasn’t harsh like Maul’s.  It was gentle, kind, and so painfully familiar that Ezra felt a fresh wave of tears pricking at his eyes.

“Kanan,” he muttered.

The hand’s thumb gently ran across his cheek, brushing his tears away, as if saying yes, it’s me, I’m here.

Another hand was on him, gently stroking his hair.  And with it came a familiar smell.  Engine grease and something else he’d only ever had one name for.

“Hera.”

It was probably a dream.  This couldn’t be real.  But right now, he didn’t care.

Chapter Text

Kanan glanced over at the corner of the Phantom where Maul lay, still unconscious, his hands cuffed behind his back.  Hera had stunned him again when he’d begun to wake up an hour ago, and he had shown no sign of movement since.  Kanan had checked the Force suppressors Hera had found as she searched for Ezra, but found no indication of how long they lasted.  He kept a hypospray prepared, just in case, as he stayed where he was, kneeling beside Ezra as Hera piloted the shuttle through Atollon’s atmosphere toward the base.

When the shuttle touched down, Kanan glanced over at Hera as she stood up.

“You get Ezra to the medbay,” Hera said.  She looked down at Maul, her eyes narrowed.  “I’ll deal with him.”

Kanan carefully lifted Ezra into his arms, settling the kid’s head against his shoulder.  Ezra whimpered, struggling weakly for a moment before giving up and slumping against Kanan’s chest.

“It’s okay,” Kanan whispered.  He could only hope that the Force suppressors would wear off soon and Ezra would be able to sense that he was safe now, that he was with his family again.

Kanan moved as fast as he could while carrying Ezra, making his way from the landing field to the medbay.  Thankfully, it wasn’t far.  The layout of the base had been planned with the consideration that they would probably have to transport injured people quickly from ships to medical.  Within minutes, he was rushing through the door and flagging down a medic, a Mirialan man who quickly escorted him to an exam room.

“What happened?” the medic asked as Kanan laid Ezra down on the table.

“I don’t know everything that happened,” Kanan said.  He pulled the hypospray from his pocket.  “He was drugged with this.  It’s a Force suppressor, but I don’t know what kind.  The burns on his eyes happened about a month ago.”

“What’s his name?” the medic asked.

“Ezra,” Kanan said.  “But he – he won't hear you if you talk to him.  I don’t know what happened, but he can't hear anything.”

“Do you have any way to communicate with him?” the medic asked.

Kanan shook his head.  He took Ezra’s hand, clinging tightly to it, hoping the kid would recognize the touch as his.

“He’s dehydrated,” the medic said.  “I’ll put him on fluids.  That should help flush the drugs from his system, too.”

The moment the needle touched Ezra’s skin, the boy screamed, kicking the table and thrashing as he tried to push Kanan and the medic away from him.  Kanan rested his free hand on Ezra’s forehead, running a thumb across his brow as he tried to calm him down.

“It’s okay,” Kanan whispered.  “You’re okay.  I promise, you’re safe.”

Ezra froze as Kanan’s hand slid from his forehead to his cheek.  He leaned into the touch, slumping against the table as the fight faded out of him.  The medic quickly slid the needle into Ezra's arm, placing the IV line before setting up a saline drip.

Tears were trickling from the corners of Ezra’s eyes.  Every muscle in his body was tensed, bracing himself for something.

“It’s okay,” Kanan said, gently running his fingers down Ezra’s cheek.  “You don’t have to be afraid.”

His voice broke.  He just wanted Ezra to know he was safe, that everything would be okay.  But without sight, hearing, or the Force, Kanan didn’t know how to reach him.  Touch clearly wasn’t enough.

“’m sorry,” Ezra muttered.  “Please.  I won't…”

Ezra’s voice broke off with a quiet sob, his face twisting like he was in pain.  Kanan couldn’t tell if the kid was trying to plead with him or with Maul.

“We could sedate him,” the medic said.  “Let him get some real rest.”

Kanan looked down at the kid, weighing the options in his head.  Ezra clearly needed to sleep.  Kanan had no way of knowing just how long he’d been chained to that wall, muzzled, beaten, and drugged, but Ezra had seemed so resigned to it that Kanan knew it had to have been days.  But forcing a sedative on the kid without being able to tell him what was going on could just terrify and hurt him even more.

Slowly, Kanan released his grip on Ezra’s hand.  The kid whimpered as Kanan rested one finger on his palm and carefully began tracing the letters on his skin; S-L-E-E-P.

Ezra nodded, and Kanan once again traced a word on his palm.  S-E-D-A-T-E.

Ezra hesitated, his hand shaking.  Finally, he nodded, grabbing Kanan’s hand again and holding it tightly.

“Do it,” Kanan said, glancing at the medic.

The medic turned away, preparing a syringe which he injected into a port on Ezra’s IV line.  Ezra’s hand tightened around Kanan’s for a moment before the drugs began working their way through his system, making his grip slacken as his body went limp.  Within moments, his eyes had closed, his face seeming almost peaceful.

“We’ll run full scans and bloodwork on him,” the medic said.  “You can stay if you want, but he’ll be out for hours.”

“I’ll stay,” Kanan said.  He wasn’t going to be letting Ezra out of his sight until he knew the kid would be okay.

Kanan squared his shoulders, drawing himself up to his full height as he stepped through the door into the row of holding cells.  Maul’s cell was the only occupied one, the door field casting a blue-white glow into the corridor.

Kanan stopped outside the cell, fury burning in his chest at the sight of the man who sat on the bench inside it.  Maul was conscious now, but still drugged with the same Force suppressors he’d given to Ezra.  For a moment, there was silence as Kanan stared down at the man who’d kidnapped and tortured his son.

“How is my apprentice?” Maul asked, a mocking smile crossing his features.

“He isn’t yours,” Kanan snapped.  “And don’t act like you care how he is.  You chained him to a wall and beat him.  You had him muzzled like an animal!”

“I disciplined my apprentice as I saw fit,” Maul said.

“He’s not your apprentice!” Kanan said, his hand slamming against the wall beside the door to Maul’s cell.  His other hand curled into a fist at his side as he fought to rein in the anger that had burst out of him.  He wouldn’t let Maul bait him into lashing out.  Maul wasn’t the one with the upper hand here.

“Are you so sure about that?” Maul asked.

He stood, withdrawing something from a pocket as he stepped toward the door field.  Kanan’s hand rested on his lightsaber, his eyes narrowing.  Maul would have been searched before he was put in the cell.  What could he have held onto?

As Maul drew closer, Kanan realized he was holding a kyber crystal, glowing with a soft red light.  Despite the color, it looked just like Ezra’s crystal.

Kanan’s eyes widened.  It didn’t just look like Ezra’s crystal.  It was Ezra’s crystal.  His crystal had been bled, corrupted by the dark side, twisted into a weapon to be wielded by a Sith.  Kanan’s hand shook as he hit a switch beside the door, allowing a small gap to open in the door field.

“Give to me,” he said.  “Now.”

To his surprise, Maul readily handed the crystal over.  Kanan stared down at the crystal.  He wasn’t bonded to it like Ezra was, but he could feel something, like a soft keening sound echoing in his mind.  He ran a finger across the length of the crystal, as if it were an injured animal he could comfort.

“Ezra may not have broken,” Maul said, “but he has changed.  He’s mine now.  This place won't hold me forever and when I escape, I will reclaim my apprentice.”

“You won't be escaping,” Kanan said, his fingers closing around the crystal.  “And you will never be able to hurt my son again.”

He turned on his heel, the edges of Ezra’s crystal digging into his palm as he left the monster who’d nearly destroyed his family behind.

Ezra gasped as he was jolted back to consciousness.  A wave of…something crashed over his mind; emotions he couldn’t name and the leaping sparks of dozens of minds and the soft hum of a planet alive with the Force.

The Force.  He could sense it again.

He yelped as a hand rested on his arm.  A warm, soothing presence wrapped around his mind, gently pushing away his fear.

“Kanan?” he asked.

The hand tightened around his forearm for a moment.  It felt like Kanan’s hand; strong but gentle.  His presence in the Force felt the same.  It had to be Kanan.

“I-is that yes?” he asked.

Kanan’s hand tightened again.

“Wh-what happened?” Ezra asked.  “Where am I?”

A lump formed in his throat as he realized that he wouldn’t be able to hear the answer.  He couldn’t even be sure if it really was Kanan he was speaking to.

The hand moved from his arm down to his hand, gently forcing his fingers open, exposing his palm.  Something traced across his palm, forming what Ezra quickly realized were letters.  S-A-F-E.

Ezra whimpered and rolled onto his side, pulling his knees up to his chest and curling in on himself.  Even feeling Kanan’s presence in the Force, he didn’t know if he could believe it was true.  Maul could be manipulating him somehow, making Ezra think he was safe with Kanan.  Any minute now, the illusion could be destroyed with more pain; a sharp blow to the face, a hand around his throat, a needle shoved into his arm, taking away his connection to the Force again.

A hand rested on his head and he flinched, squeezing his eyes shut as he braced himself.  But there was no pain, just the soft feeling of fingers gently running through his hair.  Kanan’s presence – or was it Maul’s – gently cradled his mind, filling him up with feelings of warmth and safety and comfort until Ezra didn’t care whether or not it was real.

Chapter Text

Kanan sat on the bed beside Ezra, gently cradling the kid in his arms.  Even with the Force suppressors being out of his system for two weeks now, Ezra grew frantic whenever Kanan tried to step away.  So Kanan stayed beside him, holding him and cradling their bond in his mind, doing everything he could to tell Ezra that he was safe now, that he was with his family, and no one was going to hurt him again.

“How much longer?” Ezra asked, his voice quiet.

Kanan reached out, putting his finger against Ezra’s palm and slowly, deliberately tracing each letter.  S-O-O-N.

Ezra nodded, readjusting where his head lay against Kanan’s shoulder.  Kanan gently stroked the kid’s hair, trying to soothe the small tremor that ran through Ezra’s body.

Within the hour, Ezra was scheduled for surgery that, if successful, could restore his hearing.  The medics on Chopper Base had explained that the bones inside Ezra’s ears had been dislocated and could no longer conduct sound.  There was a chance that the damage could be repaired, but Chopper Base didn’t have the resources or a medic skilled enough to perform the surgery.  And so, they were here, in a small medcenter on Chalacta.  Ezra had been admitted under a false name so the surgery could be done by a doctor sympathetic to the rebellion.

There was a soft knock on the door before it opened and a young woman, barely older than Sabine, entered, pushing a hoverchair in front of her.

“We’re ready for him,” she said, nodding in Ezra’s direction.

Kanan put his finger against Ezra’s palm once more and traced the word NOW.  Ezra nodded and sat up, still keeping a firm grip on Kanan’s hand as he carefully walked across the room.  Kanan knew that the kid was only holding on for comfort, not needing Kanan to guide him or act as his anchor.  Once the Force suppressors had worn off, Ezra had done his best to show Kanan how he sensed his surroundings through the Force.  Kanan was amazed by how far the kid had come in just six weeks since losing his sight.

Though he kept his feelings walled off where Ezra couldn’t sense them, there were times when thinking about Ezra's progress turned Kanan’s stomach.  He should have been there for Ezra, helping him adjust to living without his sight, and instead Ezra had been held prisoner by Maul, forced to learn from him, beaten and tortured when he didn't do well enough.

Kanan helped Ezra settle into the hoverchair and walked beside him, keeping a hand on the kid’s shoulder as the nurse escorted them down the hallway.  When they reached the door at the end of the hall, the nurse palmed it open, guiding them into a sterile room, a narrow table in the center of it.

Ezra was shaking as Kanan helped him to stand up and lie down on the table.  Ezra whimpered as the nurse fastened a strap around his waist.  Kanan clutched Ezra’s hand tightly in his, wrapping his mind around the kid’s presence in the Force, holding out feelings of comfort and safety, trying to make Ezra understand that everything was okay.

Ezra’s hand tightened around Kanan’s hand as another door on the opposite side of the room opened and three people entered.  Kanan nodded to the doctor, who had explained the procedure to him the day before.

“He’s ready?” the doctor asked.

“Yeah,” Kanan said.

One of the other people who’d entered the room attached a tube connected to a slow-drip bag to the IV port already in Ezra’s arm.  Kanan could feel Ezra’s anxiety radiating through the Force, growing stronger with each second that passed.  When the liquid in the bag finally reached the IV, the kid whimpered, his grip growing so tight that Kanan could barely feel his fingers.

“It’s okay,” Kanan said, his other hand resting on Ezra’s forehead as he cradled their bond, letting his love for Ezra pour across it.  “You’re okay.”

As the sedative worked its way through Ezra’s system, his grip on Kanan’s hand slackened until his arm went completely limp.  Kanan gently rested Ezra's arm down at his size, squeezing his hand one last time before releasing it.

“You can wait outside,” the doctor said.  “You’ll see him in post-op.”

Kanan nodded, quickly pressing a gentle kiss to Ezra’s forehead before he turned and left the room.

Fifty to seventy-five, he thought as the door closed behind him, silently repeating what the doctor had told him and what he had done his best to communicate to Ezra.  The kid's odds of regaining his hearing were between fifty and seventy-five percent.  And now, Kanan knew, there was nothing he could do to make those odds any better.

All he could do was wait.

Ezra could hear a faint beeping sound.

Ezra could hear a faint beeping sound.

He gasped, now-familiar darkness greeting him as his eyes snapped open.  He could hear again.

He could hear and it was so kriffing loud.

As Ezra’s hands flew to his ears, someone gently touched his arm.

“Easy,” Kanan said.  “Don’t press down on your ears.”

Tears stung at Ezra’s eyes at the sound of Kanan’s voice.  Even before Maul had deafened him, he’d thought he would never hear that voice again.

“Kanan,” he said.  His voice sounded rough, almost broken.  “Can you – can you just talk to me?”

“Yeah,” Kanan said.  “They finished your surgery two hours ago.  You’ve been sleeping off the anesthesia since then.”

Kanan’s hand closed around his, his thumb making small circles on the back of Ezra’s hand.

“They said we'll be able to take you home today,” Kanan said.

Kanan’s voice broke off and Ezra tightened his grip around Kanan’s hand.

“A-are you okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Kanan said, his voice breaking again.  “I – I am so sorry, Ezra.  I should’ve protected you better.”

The tears Ezra had been trying to hold back began slowly trickling down his cheeks.

“I thought you weren’t looking for me,” he said.  “I – I couldn’t get away by myself, and I thought no one was coming for me.”

“I’ll always come for you,” Kanan said.  “No matter what.  I promise.”

He was still weak from the anesthesia, but Ezra forced himself to sit up anyway.  He threw his arms around Kanan, burying his face in his master’s shoulder, the pain and fear he'd kept bottled up for two weeks now spilling out all at once.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he said.

“I would never let that happen,” Kanan said, his arms wrapping around Ezra so tightly that Ezra could feel his heartbeat.  “Never.”

Ezra clung to Kanan, listening to his heart pounding in his chest.  In so many ways, he still couldn’t quite believe that he was really back, that he was free of Maul.  But when Kanan was there, holding him, telling him that he would be okay, it was just a little easier to believe.

Chapter Text

Six Months Later

Ezra felt along the cracks inside the crystal.  Kanan told him the cracks weren’t physically there, but even so, Ezra could feel them in the crystal’s essence, in whatever it had resembling a spirit.  He poured himself into those cracks, trying to smooth over the edges and patch them back together, like bacta spreading over a wound.  The crystal hummed softly, welcoming Ezra’s presence.  But as quickly as that soft humming began, it ended.  The cracks grew sharp and jagged again, digging into Ezra until he gasped and dropped the crystal.

“I can’t do it!” he cried, driving the heels of his hands against his forehead.

“Hey,” Kanan said, grabbing his wrists.  “Don’t.”

Ezra wrenched his arms out of Kanan’s grip with a low growl.  He knew why Kanan was trying to stop him, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.  After six months, what were the chances of a small blow to his forehead damaging his hearing, anyway?

“Ezra –”

“Don’t,” Ezra muttered.

He pressed his hands over his eyes, holding his breath for a moment.  He didn’t want to cry this time.  He didn’t want to show Kanan that he’d gotten his hopes up after months and months of nothing but failure.  He was trying so hard to purify his crystal and still he had nothing to show for it.  Kanan tried to help, but it was Ezra’s crystal, and in the end, he was the only one who could heal it.

“I can't do it,” he said, his voice breaking.  “I’m trying so hard and I can’t.”

Ezra was shaking as he pulled his knees up to his chest, resting his forehead on top of them.  What was the point of trying to fix his crystal?  It wouldn’t fix him.  It wouldn’t give him back everything Maul had taken from him.  It wouldn’t make him forget.  It wouldn’t stop him from waking up crying from nightmares where he was still chained to the wall, the Force ripped away from him.

He jumped when he felt Kanan’s arm settle around his shoulders, then leaned against his master’s side.

“I know you’re trying,” Kanan said, his voice soft.  “And you’re doing so well.”

“No, I’m not,” Ezra said.  “You don’t have to lie to me, Kanan.”

“I’m not lying.”

Kanan sighed, his arm tightening around Ezra’s shoulders for a moment, drawing him closer.

“Let’s leave the crystal alone for a couple weeks,” Kanan said.  “You can still rebuild your ‘saber without purifying it.”

“What if I can’t ever do it?” Ezra asked, though he was quietly relieved that Kanan had suggested a break.

“If you can't, then your lightsaber will show that you survived things most people can't even imagine,” Kanan said.  He didn’t hesitate, as if he’d been expecting the question and already knew the answer.

Ezra let out a quiet hum as he rested his head against Kanan’s shoulder.  He couldn’t quite bring himself to laugh at the irony that his lightsaber would show what he’d survived and he couldn’t even see it.

He had long since accepted the fact that he would never see again.  It didn’t hurt as much to think about anymore and it no longer filled him with that paralyzing fear he’d felt during his week in the medcenter on Telos.  But every so often, it hit him again, like an unexpected blow to the head.  He was blind.  Permanently.  He couldn’t see anymore, and nothing was going to change that.

But it wasn’t as bad as he had thought it would be when he’d first found out.  He’d been practicing navigating his surroundings, both with the Force and without it, and Kanan had been doing everything he could to help.  He was moving better and more fluidly than the ever had been with Maul, and he was certain it was thanks to no longer having the fear of punishment hanging over his head every time he hit a setback.  By now, he could navigate his way through the Ghost with nearly the same level of confidence that he had before he’d gone blind.

As the thought crossed his mind, Ezra gingerly reached up, the tips of his fingers brushing along the lower edge of the scar, just under his right eye.

The scar was just another thing that would show what Maul had put him through.  Another symbol of all the damage Maul had done.  Not just to his eyes, but to his spirit.  Ezra had known he was in danger of becoming exactly what Maul wanted, but he hadn’t realized just how close he’d come.  Kanan had explained to him that during the days he’d spent locked away after trying to contact the Ghost, Maul had invaded his mind, likely trying to corrupt Ezra the same way he had done to his kyber crystal.  Without his connection to the Force, Ezra had no way of knowing it was happening and had been powerless to stop it.

And Maul would never be able to do it again.

Ezra knew Maul had been on Chopper Base for a short time.  Thankfully, he’d been in the medbay and had been spared knowing that Maul was so close by.  Just days after Ezra’s rescue, Maul had been taken to a prison base operated by another rebel cell.  He would be imprisoned there until the end of the war, after which he would be tried in whatever court system was formed in the New Republic.

Maul couldn’t hurt him anymore.  And that was worth any number of hours spent shut away in Kanan’s room, trying to heal his crystal.  It was worth any number of failures and setbacks and nightmares.

He was home.  He was safe.  He was with Kanan.  And together, they could figure this out, one step at a time.