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Everything was all… sideways?
Ezra blinked sluggishly, trying to make sense of his surroundings. Something damp was pressed against his face and a sickly sweet, earthy smell surrounded him. His shoulders ached and his hands were stuck, something biting and scratching against his wrists.
He was outdoors, lying on his side, with his hands bound behind his back.
Ezra took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. He rolled forward, stopping short as something pulled at his hands. He was tied to something then.
Slowly, he managed to get his knees under him. His head spun, and his vision swam as he sat up. A dry, metallic taste coated the inside of his mouth, telling him he’d probably been drugged.
As his vision cleared, he glanced around. He was in a field, situated in the middle of a ring of identical grey buildings. Vines were growing messily up the walls, covering windows and doors. No lights shone anywhere. This place was definitely abandoned. But not just abandoned. Decimated.
He could feel the echoes of pain and fear and the horrible, stinging agony of betrayal.
Years ago, he hadn’t believed in ghosts. It was too close to believing he’d see his parents again. The more he learned about the Force, the less certain he became. And this place felt like it should be full of ghosts, even if he couldn’t see them.
People had died here.
Across the field he could see his likely captor—a Nautolan he’d never seen before. The back of her shirt was low enough to show scars that looked like claw marks crisscrossing her shoulders. She was speaking furiously into a commlink, not paying her captive any mind.
Ezra shuffled backwards, feeling along the rope until he found what he was tied to. A stake, driven into the ground. He pulled at it, but it didn’t budge. The end was buried too deep for him to rip it out.
“You have two hours,” he heard the Nautolan say. “Get here, or he dies.”
She turned, starting when she saw Ezra awake and on his knees. He fought to reign in his fear as she approached. He wouldn’t get out of this if he was panicking.
“Don’t worry,” she said curtly. “You’ll be out of this soon, one way or another.”
She held a vibroblade in one hand which she tapped furiously against her thigh as she spoke. Her eyes roved over him in a way that unsettled him, as if she was looking at a puzzle she couldn’t figure out.
“So, what are you?” Ezra asked. “Some kind of bounty hunter?”
“Yes, actually,” the Nautolan said. “But that has nothing to do with why you’re here.”
“Care to explain?” Ezra asked. He didn’t really care about her answer. It was just a distraction to keep her from noticing as he pulled against the ropes.
“My name’s Kilindi,” she said and paused, as if waiting to see if it meant anything to him. “We have a mutual acquaintance. Zabrak. Force user. Would stab you in the back as soon as look at you.”
Ezra went still, his chest suddenly going tight, frantic denial scraping across his ribs.
“Maul sent you.”
“No,” Kilindi said harshly. “You’re just bait.”
“Bait?” he echoed.
“Maul betrayed me,” she growled, her blade resuming its frantic tapping against her leg. “And now he’s going to pay for everything.”
A wave of relief swept through Ezra in spite of the circumstances. If she was an enemy of Maul’s, that made her a potential ally.
“He betrayed me too,” Ezra said. He stopped struggling and forced himself to go still. Make it look like he wasn’t trying to get away from her anymore. “If you let me go, I can help you. We can take him together.”
“Right,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I’m not taking that chance. I know what you are to him, and that means I can’t trust you.”
“I’m not –”
Kilindi raised the knife and Ezra flinched backwards, his heart pounding. But she simply reached into her pocket, pulling out a rag spotted with engine grease. Ezra shuffled back, eyes widening as she leaned in. Kilindi grabbed his hair, wrenching his head back, and forcing the rag into his mouth. She grabbed a scrap of rope from the ground, shoving it between Ezra’s teeth and knotting it tightly behind his head.
“Sorry, kid,” she said, sounding almost sincere. “It’s nothing personal.”
She straightened up and stalked away, leaving Ezra to fight uselessly against his bonds.
The two hours Kilindi had given Maul dragged by. Ezra pulled at the ropes and stake, but no matter how hard he fought they didn’t budge. Kilindi paced along the length of the field, growing more and more agitated by the moment.
The roar of a ship’s engine filled the air, the most ominous sound Ezra had ever heard. Kilindi stopped in her tracks, her gaze drawn toward the sky. Ezra looked up, his breath hitching when he saw the Nightbrother descending toward them.
His struggles grew more and more frantic as the ship landed. He could feel Maul’s presence, his anger crackling in the air like lightning. It shook him to his core, forcing all the air from his lungs. He couldn’t let Maul take him. He wouldn’t.
Kilindi stormed over and grabbed Ezra’s hair again. A sharp gasp was blocked by the gag, leaving him drawing frantic breaths through his nose as she pressed the vibroblade against his neck. He went still, not daring to move as the cold metal rested threateningly against his skin.
“Kilindi!”
He heard Maul’s voice before he saw the man. The Sith stormed through a gap between the buildings, his lightsaber in his hand. Every muscle shook with explosive rage as his eyes locked onto Ezra. “Release him. Now!”
“No,” Kilindi said coolly. “Not until you answer one question.” Ezra whimpered as he felt blood welling up around the blade, beads of it trailing lazily down his neck. “Did you let me live?”
“If you harm him –”
“Did you let me live?!” she shouted, wrenching Ezra’s head farther back until all he could see was her furious face. His strangled cry was swallowed by the gag
“No,” Maul said, his voice cold. “I didn’t.”
The knife pressed harder against Ezra’s skin. Tears formed in the corners of Ezra’s eyes as the feeling of cold durasteel against his neck drowned out everything else.
“Why did you do it?” Kilindi’s voice broke, her pain and anguish stabbing at him through the Force, like a dozen more knives pressing against his skin and digging in.
“Because my master commanded it,” Maul said. Ezra couldn’t see him, but his voice was closer now. “And I don’t regret it.”
“So none of it meant anything to you?” Kilindi spat furiously. “Our friendship, all the years we spent training together, none of it mattered?”
A long, cold silence greeted her words. Ezra felt the hand in his hair begin to shake. The tears were flowing freely now as he focused on the blade at his throat, willing it to stay still. One wrong move and he was dead, and the crew would never know what happened to him. Then came Maul’s icy reply.
“No.”
Kilindi’s hand tightened in his hair. Ezra cried out, not from pain but from fear as the knife twitched against his neck.
“You killed my friends,” Kilindi hissed. “Everyone I ever cared about. I should just kill him. But I’ll make you a deal instead. A duel. You and me. If you win, you take the boy. If I win, you watch him die, just like I watched you kill Trezza.”
Ezra’s whole body shook as a sob overtook him. Everything Kanan had taught him about how to control his fear vanished from his mind in the face of imminent death.
“I have a counteroffer,” was Maul’s icy reply.
The knife slipped along Ezra’s throat and he gasped sharply. But the cut was shallow, not deep enough to kill. Kilindi’s grip on his hair released and his head lolled forward, where he could see Maul standing before him with one hand outstretched as he wrenched the bounty hunter off the ground.
Maul ignited his lightsaber as he dragged Kilindi closer to him. She hit the ground with a sharp grunt, the red blade carving through the air toward her prone form. She rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding a vicious stab into her back.
Ezra twisted where he knelt, looking behind him at the stake he was tied to. The short length of rope pulled at his wrists, but he turned as much as he could. Leaning back, Ezra clawed at the dirt. But it was packed hard and dry, and he just couldn’t dig fast enough. Tears choked him as he frantically wrenched at the stake. It just. wouldn’t. move.
He looked back toward Maul and Kilindi, still locked in combat. Kilindi darted in close, her knife slashing across Maul’s arm before she dodged out of the way of his blade. There was an angry burn on her right side, her clothing fused to her skin where she hadn’t gotten away in time.
“Enough of this,” Maul hissed. He reached out, one hand curling, freezing Kilindi in place. She struggled against Maul’s hold on her, gasping for breath as her chest was squeezed tight.
Maul brought his blade up, running it through Kilindi’s stomach with a force so vicious his hand shook.
Kilindi let out a strangled cry as Maul released her. He caught her as she fell, lowering her gently to the ground. Her hand twitched as the knife slipped from her fingers, falling uselessly to the ground.
“You shouldn’t have gotten involved,” Maul said. There was something almost tender in his voice. Something that sounded uncharacteristically like regret. “But I will never forget that you were the one who brought him to me.”
He placed his saber directly over her heart and switched it on. Ezra sensed a surge of rage rippling outward through the Force, and then she was gone.
Maul stood and stepped over the body of his former friend. Ezra inched backwards, away from that terrifying, possessive look in Maul’s eyes. He was shaking with sheer terror, fresh tears stinging at his eyes. Maul was going to take him and he couldn’t do anything to stop it.
No. It was the only thought that could form in his mind. No no no.
Maul circled him and Ezra felt the rope grow slack as the Sith untied it from the stake. He lurched upward, his head ramming against Maul’s chest, just under his ribcage. Maul struck him once in the stomach and again in the back, knocking Ezra flat on the ground. The rope was wrenched upwards, pulling Ezra’s shoulders back. Ezra screamed through the gag, white hot agony tearing through his arms as Maul held them just shy of the point of dislocation.
His point made, Maul grabbed Ezra’s arm, hauling him to his feet.
“None of that now,” he said sternly.
Ezra could sense a twisted satisfaction and victory as Maul looked down at him. At his “apprentice,” bound and helpless and there for the taking.
“You are coming with me.”