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Ezra had not held a fork in years. There had been no need for utensils when all of his meals were scavenged; after a certain point, everything became finger food. Moldy fruit, stale hunks of bread, the bones leftover from a roast—all of these could easily be grabbed and stuffed into your mouth as quickly as possible. Trying to cut something with a fork and knife only meant someone else had more time to try and steal your meal from you.
And now? Now he had a seat at the circular table in the Ghost’s mess hall, and there was more food on this table for dinner than he had eaten in the previous week. He was starving. He’d been starving for years. His adolescent stomach was a cavernous void; he easily could have tripled his daily food intake if only he’d been able to find it in the garbage bins and compost heaps of Capital City.
The crew began to pass the various platters around. A delicious-smelling stew made the rounds clockwise, with a pile of roasted vegetables smothered with buttery herbs following close behind. Ezra anxiously watched the platters, terrified they would arrive empty and he would have to scavenge once again.
As Kanan began to pass the stew to him, Ezra’s hands instinctively reached out and grabbed the handles, yanking it towards him. Broth spilled over the edge, splattering onto the front of Ezra’s flight suit.
"Sorry ‘bout that, my mistake," Kanan said quickly as he handed Ezra a napkin.
Ezra frowned. It had most certainly been his mistake, so why was Kanan covering for him? Some sort of trap? He left a mental flag in the moment and returned to his real task: dinner. He loaded his bowl with stew and added a pile of vegetables to his plate, shoveling them into his mouth as quickly as he could. Plate empty, he picked up his bowl and held it to his mouth, draining the broth in two gulps and immediately inhaling the chunks of meat and vegetables left behind. Not since his own family had all lived together under the same roof had Ezra tasted anything as delicious as this. Broth dribbled down his chin as he reached for a pillowy roll, keeping his plate covered with his free arm, and stuffed one, then another, into his mouth.
"Whoa, whoa, kid, slow down," Kanan said, grabbing the basket of rolls and holding it just out of Ezra’s reach. "You’re going to choke."
A look of animal panic flashed across Ezra’s face as he froze, startled. Kanan felt a cold, sinking feeling begin in his stomach; he knew that look. The fear of never knowing where your next meal was coming from; the habit, almost impossible to break, of grabbing as much as you could and cramming it into your mouth because the safest place to store food was in your stomach. He kicked himself for inadvertently threatening their newest crew member so cruelly. He might as well have been looking at his own younger self, alone, afraid, and hungry on Kaller in the years after the death of his Master.
"I think we have some meilooruns in the freezer for dessert. Ezra, give me a hand?" Kanan began to walk towards the ladder that descended into the Ghost’s extensive cold storage. Ezra, pained to leave his plate unattended and unguarded, reluctantly followed him down the ladder.
"I’m sorry," Kanan said as soon as they reached the freezer, turning to face Ezra and extending an arm towards his shoulder. "I didn’t mean to—"
"It doesn’t matter," Ezra interrupted flatly, brushing his hand away.
"It matters to me."
"Well, it doesn’t to me. Can we just grab the fruit and leave? I’m not gonna be lectured by someone whose stomach is always full."
Kanan took a deep breath. These days, he managed to keep the flow of painful memories of his life before he met Hera and the Ghost to a trickle, but seeing Ezra’s fear had ripped through whatever scar tissue had built up in the meantime, and his old wounds began to sting, threatening a torrent. He chose his words carefully.
"It hasn’t always been full."
They stood in tense silence, the only sounds being their breathing and the creaking of the ship—echoes of a meal being eaten above them.
"I’m sorry," Kanan said again, as gently as he could. "You’re right: I have forgotten what it’s like to be hungry. But I used to know. And I shouldn’t have yelled like that. I— I used to be just like you."
Ezra’s mouth opened ever so slightly in surprise. Though his outward expression did not soften, through their force-bond, Kanan could sense relief creeping over him.
"I’m sorry, too." Ezra bit his lip and shuffled uncomfortably from one foot to another, picking at the stain of broth on his flight suit. "I shouldn’t have assumed."
“It’s okay. When things are bad for long enough, it’s hard… hard to imagine anything getting better." Kanan smiled weakly from the corner of his mouth. "But it’s possible to learn to think differently. I promise. I could teach you as part of Jedi training.”
Ezra looked up at him, returning the shadow of a smile.
“That’d be cool.”
Trust was the foundation of a Master and Padawan relationship; they had a long way to go, but they each felt the beginnings of a mutual foundation, a shared knowledge from which they could draw. Feeling sufficiently resolved, Kanan began to climb the ladder again.
"Didn’t we come down here for meilooruns?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess we did," he laughed. "They’re probably worried up there. C’mon, let’s not keep them waiting for dessert any longer. We have plenty.”