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The back of Ezra’s neck prickled, like a chilly breeze had suddenly washed over him. His stomach twisted itself into knots, making him squirm inside his skin.
Something wasn’t right here.
Suddenly, something slammed into him. Ezra staggered, but managed to stay on his feet as he looked up. Beside him, one too-friendly arm around his shoulders, stood Nevan.
“Hey, Ezra,” the older boy said. He seemed almost sad. Uncertain of something. “Cade wants to see you.”
Ezra blinked. He hadn’t spared Cade a thought since he’d joined the Ghost crew.
“What are you doing working for him?” Ezra asked.
“Same thing you were,” Nevan said. “Trying not to starve to death.” With his free hand, he reached down, opening his jacket and showing Ezra the blaster he had hidden there. “Now, make this easy for both of us and come with me.”
Not seeing much of a choice, Ezra let his former sort-of-friend lead him off down the street.
For a split second as they approached the rundown but nondescript house, Ezra thought about making a break for it. He didn’t know why he was here, but he knew it couldn’t be anything good.
But the thought of that blaster hidden under Nevan’s jacket stopped him. There were other people on the street. People who could get hit if Nevan started shooting. So he let himself be roughly guided through the door.
“Ezra,” Nevan said as he led the boy toward another door. “I’m sorry about this. Really.”
Before Ezra could respond, he was forced through the second door, to a smaller room, where Cade was speaking quietly but furiously into a commlink. When he saw who’d entered the room, he hung up abruptly.
“Ezra,” he said, irritation prickling through his voice. “Been a while.”
“Why am I here?” Ezra asked, trying to ignore the creeping feeling of anxiety as he heard the door open behind him and felt someone else enter the room. His instincts screamed at him to attack, to get out of here as fast as he could. But if he could solve this problem without fighting, he had to try.
“I’m pretty sure you know why,” Cade said. “Remember that last job you did for me?”
Ezra kept his face expressionless even as his heart skipped a beat. It had been just about a week before he met Kanan and the others. A few credits to carry a backpack and hand it off to one of Cade’s dealers in another part of the city.
“The package never got there,” Cade said. “Any idea how that might have happened?”
Ezra shook his head silently. He had taken a couple grams of the glitterstim to sell on his own, just enough that it could be written off as a mistaken, but he wasn’t stupid enough to steal all of it.
“I didn’t take it,” he said.
“See, I don’t believe you,” Cade said, taking a step toward Ezra, who was suddenly very aware of the fact that two people stood between him and the easiest exit. “And you cost me over a thousand credits. Luckily, there’s a bounty out on you that will more than make up what we lost.”
The second he heard movement behind him, Ezra reacted instinctively. He rammed his elbow into Nevan’s side. Pushing his hand out, he tried to do what Kanan had shown him and throw his attackers away. But he only made the one he didn’t recognize stumble back a few steps.
He twisted as someone caught his arm, but couldn’t break free. Within seconds, he was toppling to the floor, a crushing weight pinning his legs down.
“Get off!” Ezra snarled, clawing frantically at the floor as he tried to dislodge his attacker.
He felt a hand lift up the bottom of his shirt right before something small and sharp pierced the skin of his back. Ezra pushed himself up onto his hands and knees as the weight lifted off of him, but the drugs took effect quickly and he crumpled again. His breath grew slow and shallow as his eyes crossed. A strange, floaty feeling overtook him, making him feel like he was only halfway attached to his body. If it weren’t for the circumstances, the sensation might have actually felt good.
“Wait,” he gasped. “You don’t have to do this. I can get the money.”
“Right,” Cade said with a smirk. “Tie him up.”
Ezra tried to crawl out of the way, but he was too slow. Someone grabbed his arms, pulling them behind his back and winding a length of rope around his wrists. He kicked frantically behind him, only for his ankles to be caught and tied together.
“Please.” His voice broke as he pulled against the ropes. “I swear, I can –”
His plea dissolved into a cry of pain as a knee rammed into his back. Someone grabbed his hair, holding his head steady as another length of rope was shoved between his teeth and tied behind his head.
“The Imps don’t know Kai’s face,” Cade said. “When she gets back, she’ll take him to the garrison.”
He seized the back of Ezra’s collar, dragging him across the floor toward another door. Palming it open, he revealed a dark, narrow space that could only generously be called a closet.
“He should be safe in here until then.”
He shoved Ezra into the closet, tossing him roughly back to the floor. Then the door shut, and Ezra was plunged into darkness.
Ezra weakly struggled against his bonds again, but they were so tight, with no give to them at all.
All the fight drained out of him as he realized just how trapped he was. He’d been so kriffing stupid letting them lead him here, thinking he could solve this on his own. Now he was about to be sold to the Empire, and no one was coming to help him. No one ever did.
In the pitch darkness, the glow of yellow eyes and a red lightsaber flashed before his vision. He flinched reflexively at the memory, making the ropes wrench at his arms. He remembered the Imperial’s smug taunts as he batted Kanan and Ezra away like insignificant pests.
Your Master cannot save you, boy.
The mere thought of the Inquisitor made him shudder. He could still viscerally remember the cold that had washed over him the moment he set foot on Stygeon Prime. He still didn’t understand what it was, only that he couldn’t go back to it.
But he would. They would hand him right over to it and it would tear him apart and consume him. He couldn’t save himself, and no one would save him.
No one would save him.
He was alone. Just like before. Only this time he would be a slave to the Empire. If they didn’t just kill him like they’d killed his parents.
A heavy sob wracked Ezra’s body, dissolving into a muffled scream as the ropes pulled at his arms.
Something slammed against the closet door and a voice shouted harshly from the other side.
“Shut up already!”
Ezra flinched again, whimpering as pain jolted through his arms. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. He’d thought Cade would just beat him up, maybe force him to do another job for free. He hadn’t even known about the bounty, let alone that Cade would try to collect on it.
Ezra lay there for what felt like hours, the strange, floaty feeling of the drugs making him feel like he was suspended in an inky abyss, time dissolving around him. The ropes dug harshly against his skin every time he moved. Hopelessness crept in steadily, smothering him until he couldn’t breathe.
He couldn’t kriffing breathe and the ropes were too tight and it was too dark. He was going to die in here and if he didn’t, the Empire was going to kill him.
He was crying. He didn’t know when he’d started, but he was. His breath was coming in short, sharp gasps, not drawing nearly enough air.
Suddenly, a sharp, echoing sound cut through the tangled web of his thoughts. In some distant corner of his mind, he recognized it as blaster fire. Something hit the door with a heavy thud and Ezra flinched again, whimpering as a spike of pain jammed itself into his shoulder.
Then the door slid open.
Ezra gasped, squeezing his eyes shut against the blinding light. He felt hands on his shoulders and yelped, jerking away. But he couldn’t fight with his limbs bound together so tightly. Those hands grabbed him again, pulling him closer.
“Ezra.”
He froze, his struggles ceasing as he recognized the voice.
“It’s me,” Kanan said. “Open your eyes.”
Ezra obeyed, barely believing it as he saw Kanan in front of him.
Kanan slid his fingers under the rope wrapped around Ezra’s face, pulling it from his mouth. Ezra winced, gently working his aching jaw from side to side.
“Hold still,” Kanan said as he laid Ezra back down on his side. He ignited his lightsaber and Ezra felt the heat against his skin as he severed the ropes.
“Can you walk?” Kanan asked.
Ezra nodded as he staggered to his feet, looking around the room warily. Nevan and the other attacker whose name he didn’t know were in a heap on the floor, one unconscious with a gash across his forehead, Nevan with his hands pressed over a blaster wound to his leg.
“Let’s go,” Kanan said, taking hold of Ezra’s arm and tugging him toward the door.
Ezra managed only a few steps before his knees gave out and he collapsed against Kanan’s side. His head was spinning, vision swimming until he felt nauseous.
“We have to get out of here fast,” Kanan said. “I’m gonna pick you up.”
Ezra barely had time to nod before Kanan scooped him off the ground and set him over his shoulder.
Ezra went limp, not fighting the drugs anymore as Kanan ran from the building. He set Ezra down on the speederbike outside, climbing on behind him and holding on tight. They sped off down the street, Kanan holding Ezra upright as they fled to safety.
Ezra hadn’t said a word since he was rescued. The glassy look in his eyes and the way he swayed unsteadily when he’d tried to stand were enough to tell Kanan he’d been drugged.
Now, the kid sat, eerily silent, at the table in the galley where Kanan had set him. Kanan could see dried tear tracks running down his face. As Kanan sat down beside him, Ezra flinched, his eyes squeezing shut for a moment.
“I need to see your hands,” Kanan said.
Ezra didn’t respond. Didn’t give any sign he’d even heard Kanan. It was unnerving. The kid was always full of energy. Even when he subdued it, it was always there, humming just under the surface. Kanan had never seen him empty like this before.
He gently took the kid’s right hand, pulling away the remains of the ropes still wound around his wrists. Ezra let out a pained noise, not even quite a whimper, so quiet Kanan barely heard it.
The skin of Ezra’s wrists had been rubbed raw, blood leaking sluggishly from the wounds. Slowly, doing his best not to aggravate the injury any further, he wrapped a bandage around his Padawan’s wrist.
“These shouldn’t take long to heal,” he said. Ezra didn’t even nod or blink in response.
As Kanan began bandaging Ezra’s other wrist, the boy finally spoke, his voice smaller then Kanan had ever heard it before.
“You came looking for me.”
“Of course I did,” Kanan said.
He finished wrapping Ezra’s wrist and looked up. When he met his Padawan’s eyes, he winced. There was no “of course” for this kid. He couldn’t take for granted that anyone would come back for him, any more than Kanan could before he met Hera.
“Hey,” Kanan said, his hand covering Ezra’s. “I’ll always come back for you.”
“I didn’t think –” Ezra swallowed nervously, pulling his hand from Kanan’s and clenching it into a fist in his lap. “I didn’t think anyone would help me.”
“You’re part of our family now, kid,” Kanan told him, his voice as gentle as if he were approaching a scared loth-kit. “All of us would do anything to help you.”
Ezra didn’t move, but he seemed to shrink before Kanan’s eyes. For a second, Kanan could see a flash of the little kid Ezra must have once been. Kanan had no idea how the kid had ended up on the streets or how long ago, but the scars had never been more visible than they were today.
Slowly, not even seeming to realize he was doing it, Ezra leaned against Kanan’s side. Kanan stiffened, taken aback at first. Ezra had always been closed off, shying away from most physical contact. The drugs must have been affecting him more than Kanan had realized.
Kanan put his arm around Ezra’s shoulders. The kid was shaking, pent up fear and pain keeping itself locked inside. Whatever had happened, whatever had made Ezra so certain no one was coming to save him, the kid was nowhere near ready to talk about it. So Kanan did the only thing he could. He held Ezra close, letting the kid lean on him for as long as he needed to.
“I’ll always come back, kid,” he said. “I promise.”