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Kanan arrived at the training room at exactly 0400 hours. But his usual opponent wasn’t the one who awaited him. He stopped in his tracks, momentarily rooted to the spot by fear and disgust when he saw who’d been tasked with beating him into shape today.
The Seventh Sister stood in the center of the room, her lightsaber already in her hand. She grinned when she saw Kanan frozen in place, just barely managing to hide his fear. Just looking at her made Kanan’s skin crawl at the memory of her hands ghosting over his body, taunting him with the knowledge that she could do whatever she wanted to him and if he valued his life he wouldn’t do anything to stop it. She hadn’t. Not yet. But she delighted in the fact that Kanan knew damn well that she could.
Still, he reminded himself, if she was here, then she wasn’t “disciplining” Ezra. The kid was probably locked in his cell, and as much as Kanan hated to think of that, it meant he was relatively safe.
“What are you doing here?” Kanan hissed, his eyes narrowing.
“Did you really think the Grand Inquisitor has nothing better to do than babysit our most consistently disappointing candidate?” Seventh asked. Her thumb ran along her weapon’s activation switch, caressing it, itching to use it.
Kanan rolled his eyes, trying to show her that her attempts to antagonize him were ineffective. But deep down, it terrified him. If he couldn’t perform to their satisfaction, they would kill him. And Ezra would be left alone here with no one to protect him.
“You must have karked up pretty bad to get stuck here then,” Kanan snapped. “Or maybe I’m the one being punished, being saddled with such a weak opponent.”
“I’ll have you know I jumped at the chance to get you alone, Thirteenth,” she all but purred, that horrible, predatory smile widening. “But enough foreplay.” The words had barely left her mouth before she attacked, her red blade whipping through the air toward Kanan’s neck.
He ducked, igniting his own blade as he slid across the floor and came up behind her. The sight of the red blades made him sick to his stomach. One of the crystals was his own, bled right in front of him as he was forced to watch. But his only options were to use this weapon or die.
Seventh pivoted, her blades a furious blur in the darkness as she pressed her attack. Kanan did everything he could to keep blocking her strikes, but couldn’t break through her defenses fast enough to land any hits of his own. He’d become a better duelist out of necessity since his training had begun here, but he was still years out of practice. Still a half-trained Padawan who couldn’t even protect himself and his son.
“I’m almost embarrassed for you,” Seventh said as her blade crashed against Kanan’s once more. “You can’t even fight properly anymore. How did you even keep that brat alive for so long?”
Kanan’s only response was to bring his blades swinging down toward her legs. He could already picture them stabbing into her flesh, hacking her limb from limb.
But they didn’t. She deflected the blow easily before pressing her attack. Kanan just barely managed to block her strike at his head. For a moment she held him there, her blade pressing down against his. He faltered, his focus slipping uncharacteristically. It returned just in time for him to duck beneath Seventh’s next swing. A heavy, dark sense of dread was quickly blossoming in the pit of Kanan’s stomach. Something wasn’t right. Well, less right than usual.
Seventh darted forward, taking advantage of Kanan’s distraction to stab her blade deep into his bicep. She ducked under his wild, aimless swipe and came up beside him. Those long, menacing fingers closed around his arm and pulled it back, locking his elbow against her chest and pulling and twisting until his fingers spasmed open and his weapon fell to the floor.
The Force slammed violently against him and Kanan was flung into the opposite wall. He barely registered the jarring pain as he collapsed to the floor. His head began spinning and a harsh pressure steadily built where his neck met his skull. It spread outward, a strange combination of numbness and pain. He’d felt it before, when the Grand Inquisitor would strap him down and tear into his mind.
“Wh-what are you doing to me?” he gasped, his eyes slipping out of focus as he tried to drag himself across the floor, away from Seventh, who was striding toward him like a wild cat stalking its prey.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said in a sickly sweet voice that told Kanan she knew exactly what he meant.
The pressure kept building and beneath it a sickening, ice cold fear rose up. His skin and insides were burning with the cold that was trying to devour him from the inside out.
“Stop,” he gasped.
“Still don’t know what you mean,” Seventh said, her amusement pressing against the surface of his mind.
Kanan lunged at her, staggering to his feet and swinging his fist wildly in the general direction of her smug face.
“Just stop!” he cried as she easily sidestepped his sloppy attack. “You’ve already won, now get out of my head!”
The pain and hopelessness that surged through Kanan’s mind was so overwhelming he barely noticed Seventh moving. She grabbed his arm and wrenched it back, flinging him to the floor at her feet.
His head was spinning, pain and panic drowning out his surroundings as he fought to maintain his focus. A heavy weight settled over him, a hand grabbing hold of his chin. Kanan forced open his eyes, not even realizing he’d closed them, to see the Seventh Sister looming over him, straddling his hips.
“I’m not the one who’s in your head, Thirteenth,” she said. “In fact, it’s not your head at all.”
And then it hit him. Through the revulsion and fear, the answer managed to find its way to him.
Ezra.
Something’s happening to Ezra.
“What are they doing to him?” he demanded.
“Oh, I’d worry a lot more about what’s going to happen to you, pet,” she laughed. One of her fingers slid along his lower lip and Kanan’s gut clenched. He reached for the Force, humming around him and through him, but it slipped out of his grasp.
“Pathetic,” she snapped. “How do you expect to survive if you can’t even focus when your brat is in a little pain?” Her hand travelled down from his chin, settling around his throat and applying just enough pressure to make Kanan freeze up beneath her. “Maybe this is all you’re really suited for.”
Horror and revulsion surged in Kanan’s gut as she locked eyes with him. Not now kriff please not now.
“What. are. you. doing. to. my. son?” Kanan growled, refusing to let her distract him.
“You didn’t really think we’d let you keep him, did you?” Seventh taunted. “That we’d let someone with his abilities stay bonded to such a weak excuse for an Inquisitor?”
And suddenly Kanan realized exactly where that numb-pain was coming from. He could sense it, now that he knew what to look for. The bond he shared with Ezra, that had tied them together since the kid was barely more than a baby, was straining and splintering, fighting to keep itself intact under a brutal assault.
“No,” Kanan gasped. He struggled to throw the Seventh Sister off of him, but she was surprisingly strong for her size and he could barely remember how to move as Ezra’s pain and fear tore through him. “You… you can’t.”
It was more a plea than anything else. A desperate attempt to reach something in her that knew this was wrong. But she just she just rested a finger against his lips, a gesture that made him recoil in disgust.
“Shh,” she whispered. “It’ll all be over soon.”
The roaring in Kanan’s head grew stronger. He felt, in a distant, detached way, like he was screaming. He could feel Ezra screaming along with him, sense his agony as his resolve began to fade under the Inquisitor’s attack.
“No.” It was the only word Kanan could force out as he gasped for air. “No. No.”
He’d thought having Ezra physically taken away from him was painful. But watching his son be dragged away, screaming for help, was nothing compared to this. Nothing. It was like having a piece of his heart slowly cut away and ripped out of him.
He shoved weakly at Seventh’s shoulders, but she just grabbed his wrists, pinning them down beside his head. He couldn’t kriffing move, the fear and pain paralyzing him as he felt his son’s screams echoing through the Force.
That horrible, smugly satisfied grin on the Seventh Sister’s face was the last thing he saw before the roaring pain became too much and the world went black.
Kanan’s head was pounding as he slowly fought his way back to consciousness. He was sprawled out on the cold metal floor of a dark room, barely able to move his limbs as he tried to figure out where he was and how he’d gotten here.
Slowly, the pieces started sliding into place. He was in his cell. He’d been with the Seventh Sister before and…
Suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, Kanan sat up, wracking his brain as he tried to remember what happened. She’d been on top of him, pinning him down. He’d struggled.
But his clothes were still on and at first glanced appeared undamaged. And he didn’t feel any… any grossness or any sense that something had happened. Besides, when—not if, when, a cruel voice in the back of his head reminded him—she finally had her way with him, she’d want him to be conscious. To know what was happening and that he couldn’t stop it.
No, something else had happened.
Ezra.
It all came flooding back the moment he thought his son’s name. Ezra’s pain screaming to him through the Force. The bond cracking and straining as someone tried to tear it apart.
He reached out, holding his breath as he sought out Ezra’s presence in the Force. Relief surged through him, stronger than he’d ever felt anything before, when he found it; frightened, trembling, but alive. Alive and still connected to him. Whatever the Inquisitors had tried to do to destroy their bond, it didn’t work.
Didn’t work this time, a voice whispered in the back of his head. They’d try again. Or they’d decide to cut their losses and just get rid of him. Ezra couldn’t be bonded in the Force to a dead man, after all.
He staggered to his feet, running to the door and slamming his hand against the controls. But the door was locked, his control of it overridden.
Kanan slammed his fist against the door, shouting wordlessly. He could force the damn thing open, but if he was locked in, there would be Purge Troopers standing guard outside. Even if he could be sure of where Ezra was he wouldn’t stand a chance of reaching the kid.
Knees buckling beneath him, Kanan sank to the floor, the weight of his anguish pushing him down. He closed his eyes, reaching out through the Force. It was forbidden, and if anyone found out about it he’d face a punishment the likes of which he couldn’t even imagine. But he didn’t care. Ezra needed him. So he drew on those long-ago lessons from his real Master, trying to clear his head and find even a moment of peace (peace is a lie, the Inquisitor's voice repeated in the back of his mind) before he stretched out his consciousness toward Ezra.
He carefully cradled that terrified presence with his own. At least, he tried to. But Ezra just shrank away from him, falling deeper into the dark well he was hiding in.
Kanan tried and tried, for how long he didn’t know, but eventually had to admit defeat. He pulled back, away from the boy who wanted nothing to do with him or their bond.
The Inquisitors might not have broken their bond, but they’d destroyed it nonetheless.