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The Seventh Sister grinned as she observed her fellow Inquisitor. The Fourth Sister stood in front of the holoprojector, watching the feed from the camera in the boy’s cell. The Padawan was still unconscious, his chest rising and falling slowly, but the other Inquisitor’s eyes were fixed on it as if it were the most fascinating image she’d ever seen.
“He put up quite a fight when we brought him in,” the Seventh Sister said. She could feel the Fourth Sister’s irritation prickling beneath the other woman’s skin. “But that won't last. Underneath all that … spirit, he’s still a child. He’ll break easily.”
The Fourth Sister said nothing, as if no one had spoken. The pointed silence and the anger that burned beneath it only emboldened the Seventh Sister. Ever since the Inquisitorius had first heard of the boy, it had been so easy to get under her Sister’s skin.
“If you aren’t comfortable questioning him, I’d be more than happy to do it myself.”
The Fourth Sister’s hand curled into a claw at her side and the Seventh Sister’s throat tightened. She gasped for air instinctively, but didn’t fight against the unseen grip around her neck. The Fourth Sister wouldn’t kill her, not over this, and the Seventh Sister wouldn’t give the other woman the satisfaction of acting like she was afraid.
After a moment, the pressure on her throat eased and the smile returned to the Seventh Sister’s face. The Fourth Sister turned, fury blazing in her eyes.
“If you lay a hand on him,” she said, her voice like ice, “I will cut it off. Do you understand?”
“Of course.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before the Fourth Sister left. The Seventh Sister turned toward the holoprojector and the image of the unconscious boy. As much as she wished she could be the one to interrogate him, she had to admit that this would certainly be worth watching.
A wave of nausea hit Ezra before his eyes even opened. He swallowed down the bile that rose up in his throat and slowly pushed himself off the floor until he was sitting up. It was harder than he’d expected. His arms felt like they weren’t completely connected to the rest of his body and his head spun until he was upright and leaning back against the wall.
The Mirialan woman’s hand tangled in his hair, wrenching his head back. He fought to break free of the stormtroopers’ grips on him as she raised the syringe in her other hand.
She’d drugged him. That explained things.
The soft sound of a booted footstep on the metal floor echoed through the cell and Ezra looked up. He hadn’t even realized he wasn’t alone.
A figure stood in the corner of the cell beside the door. In the darkness, Ezra couldn’t make out their face, but he could feel their eyes on him. Ezra narrowed his eyes, glaring defiantly at the figure. Skulking in the shadows and staring wasn’t going to scare him into talking.
At long last, the figure spoke.
“I’ve been waiting a long time to see you here.”
The voice was feminine, strangely gentle, and there was something about it that seemed so familiar, though Ezra couldn’t quite place it.
“Sorry I kept you waiting,” he said. “But I didn’t feel much like getting tortured this week.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Ezra.”
The figure stepped forward, and Ezra’s hand scrabbled against the wall as he tried to get to his feet.
“Don’t try to stand up yet,” the figure – the Inquisitor? – said. “The lanaxel is still in your system.”
No sooner had she said it when Ezra’s legs gave out and he fell to his knees, his head spinning. Lanaxel was one of the most powerful sedatives he knew of. It could easily keep him from walking on his own for a full day, maybe even longer.
Drawing in a long, deep breath, Ezra steeled himself before glaring up at the shadowed figure again.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” he growled. “I won't tell you anything, and I won't turn, no matter what you do to me.”
“You always did try your best to be brave,” the Inquisitor said. “No matter how scared you really were.”
Ezra blinked, taken aback by the strange phrasing. She was talking like she knew him. Or, he realized, like she’d been watching him, studying him, for a long time now.
The figure drew closer and Ezra’s hand twitched toward his hip, instinctively grasping for a weapon that was no longer there. His heart leapt into his throat even as he tried to find his center, focus through his fear just like Kanan had taught him.
The Inquisitor’s features grew more distinct as she crossed the cell. As her face became clearer, Ezra’s eyes widened. He knew that face. He had nearly forgotten it until Sabine had found the holodisk hidden away in the basement.
She was older now, her face more lined and weathered than it was in the holo. Her eyes were now bright, burning yellow. But there was no mistaking the face of his own mother.
“No,” Ezra muttered, shaking his head as he dropped his gaze to the floor. This couldn’t be real. The drugs were still in his system. He had to be hallucinating. Or the Inquisitor who had taken him was making him see this, pulling the image of his mother from his mind to manipulate him and make it hurt that much more when the actual torture started.
“Ezra –”
“You’re not real.”
Ezra pressed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. He tried to will the vision away, but he could still hear her voice.
“I am real, Ezra,” she said. “Search your feelings and you’ll sense it.”
“No!”
“You’ve always been so perceptive,” she said. “Even when you were a little boy, you saw things the way they were.”
“Shut up!” Ezra snapped, lowering his hands and opening his eyes again. “I don’t know what you’re doing to me, but you’re not her!”
The Inquisitor knelt down in front of him and laid her hand against his cheek. Ezra froze, his skin humming beneath her painfully familiar touch. He wanted to keep denying it, and part of him still screamed that it couldn't be true, that it couldn’t possibly be her. But the feeling of her hand against his face dragged him back through time, to the last scraps of memories he still had from Before.
It was really her.
He wasn’t dreaming. He wasn’t hallucinating.
The Inquisitor he faced was his mother.
She smiled, as if she knew that Ezra had realized she was telling the truth.
“I’ve missed you so much.”
Ezra’s breath caught in his throat. He blinked rapidly as the burning feeling of incoming tears welled up behind his eyes. He didn’t want to cry. Not here, not in front of an Inquisitor, no matter who she was. But as her arms slowly wrapped around him, drawing him close until his head was resting against her shoulder, the tears began to trail down his cheeks.
He'd thought he would never see her again. Never hear her voice, never be held in her arms again. But she was here and she was real and for a few precious seconds, the reality of where they were and what she now was faded away.
But all too soon, reality sank back in. He was still kneeling on the floor of a cell, in some Imperial facility, trapped alone with an Inquisitor.
“Mom," he said, his voice breaking. “Just let me go.”
With a soft sigh, she released him, one hand ghosting along his arm before she pulled away.
“I can't do that, seyev.”
The sound of the word in her voice was like a knife being driven into Ezra’s stomach. Something inside him cracked as he was struck by just how wrong all of this was. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be drugged, locked in a cell, looking up at the mother he hadn’t seen in almost nine years and seeing her in the black armor of an Inquisitor. None of this should be happening, but it was and knowing it made him feel like he was being ripped in half.
“You belong here,” his mother said. “With me.”
Ezra’s hands balled into fists at his sides, newfound anger surging up in his mind. She’d been here, alive, for years. She had to know that he was still out there, alone. And she hadn’t come for him, hadn’t even tried to make contact, until now. Until another Inquisitor had brought him to her.
“If you really believed that, you would have come looking for me years ago,” he said.
“You’re angry,” his mother said, resting a hand on his shoulder. Ezra stiffened, desperately wanting to push her away and lean into her touch at the same time. “And your anger can make you stronger than anything that Jedi has taught you. I can help you, Ezra. I can teach you –”
“Stop it!” Ezra hissed. He wasn’t going to listen to this. Not from her. “I won’t turn.”
Her hand tightened on his shoulder. As Ezra looked up at her face, something shifted behind her eyes. A burning, powerful anger that he had never seen in her before. It only lasted a moment before she released him, but it was enough to make a cold tendril of fear coil in Ezra’s stomach.
“Mom,” he said. He dropped his gaze to the floor. He couldn’t keep looking at her. Not in that armor. Not with the lightsaber at her hip. Not with that darkness in her now-yellow eyes. “You don’t have to do this. I know you’re better than this. You taught me to be better than this. Just let me go. Come with me. I can help you. I promise –”
“Enough.”
His mother’s voice was quiet but cold as she abruptly stood up. Ezra’s mouth snapped shut as if she had shouted at him, the pit of his stomach growing even colder.
“You will join us, Ezra,” she said. “I am your mother and I will do what’s best for you.”
She paused, as if in thought, though to Ezra it seemed more like hesitation.
“Even if that means I have to watch you break.”
Ezra’s head snapped up again, his eyes widening. His mother waved her hand and the cell door slid open, revealing two stormtroopers waiting outside.
“Mom –”
“Take him to interrogation,” she said as the stormtroopers entered the cell.
Ezra jerked back, his head slamming against the wall as the stormtroopers drew closer. He went limp as they grabbed his arms, trying to turn himself into dead weight, but they were stronger than him and hauled him to his feet easily.
He struggled as they dragged him toward the door, but with the sedatives still in his system, there was almost nothing he could do. As they pulled him into the corridor, he looked back at his mother, who just stood there, watching him get dragged away.
“Mom!” he cried. “Don’t do this! Please!”
She narrowed her eyes and the cold exploded in the pit of Ezra’s stomach.
“Mom!”
The word came out half choked by the tears that now streamed down his cheeks. Before he could say another word, his mother turned away and walked off down the corridor, leaving him to the mercy of the stormtroopers.