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The hours following Kanan and Ezra’s return were long--much longer than Sabine would have liked to admit that they felt. Two days passed in a silence that manifested itself over the Ghost like a dense fog, heavy with unspoken words, yet cold and empty. Sabine would occasionally hear Kanan and Hera speak to each other in hushed voices, sharing words that that weren’t meant for the rest of the crew just yet; her heart clenched whenever she heard Hera stifle a sob. As the time ticked by, the Ghost began to feel less and less like home. The rooms felt hollow and open, the walls vacant and pale, and no amount of artistic expression conjured up from Sabine’s fingertips could give them color.
Eventually, spending time aboard the Ghost had drained Sabine entirely. She began to wake up earlier, heading outside before dawn and sometimes not returning before dusk. She often found herself taking up a variety of different jobs around the base; at least when she was working, she could hold conversations with other people.
Today, she and Ezra seemed to share the same ideas. Sabine had been sketching away at an image of the sunrise--they were always so captivating on Atollon--when she noticed him leaving the Ghost, his gaze cast downwards.
“Ezra?” she stood up and called out after him. The boy offered no response, either not hearing her or simply choosing to ignore her. He continued to walk forward, arms folded together and pressed tightly against his chest, as if he was trying to curl up into himself and disappear. He probably was.
Sabine exhaled sharply through her nose as she watched his figure move away silently, frustration and sadness gnawing at her from the inside. All he probably wanted was to be alone, but then again, so did everyone else. She bit her lip as she watched him move away, farther and farther from the makeshift fence of sensor markers. She turned her body to follow him, then thought better of it. If he ran into trouble with the krykna, Sabine knew he could take care of himself.
"Have you seen Ezra?”
Sabine glanced away from the spot of the wall she’d been studying to find Hera standing against the doorframe of her cabin. “Not since earlier. Why?” The heat had a way of pushing Sabine back into the Ghost much earlier than she had anticipated, and today was no exception. To hear that Ezra hadn’t followed suit was a surprise.
“Rex wanted to talk to him.” Hera’s tone was soft, quiet, as if speaking any louder required more effort than she possessed. “Wherever he’s gone, he doesn’t have his comlink on him.”
“He left the base a while ago,” said Sabine, unable to suppress the small amount of worry that slipped its way into her words. “I’m surprised he hasn’t come back by now.”
“Take the Phantom,” Hera responded without missing a beat. “Go with Zeb.” Sabine couldn’t miss the way Hera’s hand clenched around the doorframe before she spoke again. “Bring him back safe.”
Ezra hadn't given much thought to anything when he left the base in the early morning. He knew he wouldn’t have been able to travel very far before someone from the rebellion found him again, though whether or not he’d have been willing to return with them was a different story altogether.
It wasn’t until he found himself being pursued by a small group of krykna that he realized he really should have thought this through. Why do I always find myself in these situations? At the first sight of them, he had reached instinctively for his lightsaber before remembering that it no longer hung at his side. The next moment, he bolted. But he could only run for so long, and before he knew it, he found himself pressed against one of the many large, rock-like structures that protruded from the planet’s surface. Ezra could hear the sounds of the krykna as they moved closer and closer to his vulnerable position. When they rounded the sides of the rock in front of him, Ezra pressed himself further into the stone against his back.
A few moments later, a shadow passed overhead. Ezra glanced away from his pursuers momentarily to make out the shape of the Phantom against the afternoon sun. Zeb and Sabine exited the ship only seconds after it had landed, weapons aimed and shooting at the spiders before Ezra could fully comprehend what was happening. As they made their way over to him, the creatures continued to weave their way over the rocky formations of the planet. Had their numbers multiplied in the last few minutes? Ezra couldn’t tell.
“I hate multi-leggers,” Zeb grumbled as he approached, kicking out at at one that had come too close for comfort before drilling a blaster bolt through its eyes. “Why haven’t you done anything against them, kid?”
“I, uh, don’t exactly have my lightsaber anymore,” Ezra explained hastily, flinching as the creatures hissed and pressed themselves even further forward.
“Well, what happened to it?” asked Sabine. Her attention snapped briefly away from Ezra and back to the creatures that surrounded them. She lifted her arm and fired at one to her right. A painful screech filled the air as the blaster bolt pierced its eye before it collapsed to the ground in a silent heap.
“It kind of got destroyed?” Ezra’s response sounded more like a question than a statement.
“Destroyed?” Sabine looked back towards him, her tone laced with surprise and confusion.
“Can we save this conversation for when we’re out of this mess?” Zeb’s voice rang out before Sabine could inquire any further. The krykna continued their hissing. Ezra took another step back, pressing his back against the rock behind him. He shut his eyes.
He hadn’t felt this kind of fear in a long while, not since the encounter with the fyrnocks on the asteroid. Noises reverberated inside of his head; the cries of the fyrnocks. The whir of the Grand Inquisitor’s lightsaber. Blaster fire. The screeches of the krykna. A voice broke through the white noise, cold and dark and female. It reminded him of the temple. Why didn’t you listen?
“Ezra!” It took him a moment to register that someone was shouting his name. A blaster bolt resounded through the noise, followed by the dying screech of another spider. The voice was back, mingling with the familiar tone of Zeb and Sabine’s. “Why did you leave the base? Why did you--” Another blast. “--come out here?”
Why did you trust him?
“Ezra!”
Why did you leave her there?
Why? Why? Why?
“I don’t know,” Ezra’s voice rose. “I don’t know!” He was shaking, from fear or anger, guilt or adrenaline, he didn't know. He pressed the palms of his hands into his eyelids, as if somehow they could drill out the senseless noise.
Yes, you do. You know why.
Tears pricked the corners of his eyes. Of course he knew why. He just couldn’t understand why it was so hard to accept. “It’s my fault,” he choked out, his voice breaking on the last syllable. He sank to the ground, his knees giving out beneath him as he finally let the tears fall.
“What are you talking about?” Sabine’s voice resounded through the mess of noise in Ezra’s skull; confusion was plain in her words. No response. She bit her lip. A shot from Zeb’s bo-rifle sped past her and ricocheted off the hardened shell of the nearest krykna. An angry hiss was its rebuttal.
“It's my fault,” Ezra repeated after a moment, still sitting on his knees with his gaze trailed downward. His voice sounded distant and hollow, as if those words had drained him of all the energy he possessed. His hands hung limply at his sides. “Kanan, Ahsoka, everything… it's all because of me.”
“What are you talking about?” Zeb repeated Sabine’s earlier question, risking a glance back at Ezra’s crumpled figure. The clicking of pincers from the spiders made the motion fleeting.
“Malachor.” He'd avoided the name for as long as he could since the return; those three syllables were coated in so much darkness that it had been easier to swallow it than to speak it. The word tasted bitter and sharp in his mouth, like a thin blade pressing into the tip of his tongue. Ezra felt, rather than saw, Sabine tighten her grip on her blasters.
As if stung by the sharpened word, the krykna reared back. Their hissing and clicking decreased in volume until it was a low murmur, just background noise for the scene unfolding. Zeb kept his weapon aimed at them as Sabine sank down next to Ezra.
“What happened on Malachor?” she asked, her voice a soft contrast to the bold tone she usually conveyed.
“I’m sorry,” Ezra answered, his voice a strained whisper. He shook his head, eyes screwing shut, trying to erase the scenes within his memories. He swallowed and opened his eyes, casting his gaze away from Sabine before speaking again. “I can't.”
Before Sabine could say anything more, Zeb nudged her. “Look,” he muttered quietly as he gestured to the krykna. Sabine glanced up to notice that they had all become suddenly still, watching the three of them with what appeared to be intrigued stares.
“What are they doing?” she whispered back as she stood up.
“No idea. But at least it gives us an opportunity to get out of here.” Sabine nodded and lifted her blasters, ready to start shooting her way out.
But Ezra had noticed the kryknas’ strange behavior as well. He got to his feet and took a shaking breath before closing his eyes and lifting his hand, extending it towards the creatures. Sabine watched, awestruck, as they fixed their beady, black eyes on him.
Ezra moved slowly towards them as he brought his arm forward, keeping his eyes shut, relying on forces unseen to guide his footsteps in the right direction. Sabine and Zeb glanced at each other before following steadily behind him, their weapons lowered but their grips never loosening. The kryknas’ bodies turned to follow their movements, but they made no attempts to pursue them, their gazes only lingering. The trio maneuvered themselves around the group of spiders and behind a collection of large rocks before turning and making a break in the direction of the Phantom, climbing inside and taking off as quickly as they could.
They spent the ride back together in silence.
All was still aboard the Ghost. Sabine leaned against the doorframe of her cabin, one of her airbrush blasters clutched in her fist as she surveyed the scene around her. Hera and Zeb stood in the cockpit, their backs to her and the hallway as Chopper rolled towards them. For once, the astromech wasn’t making a sarcastic comment in the beeps and whistles of the Binary tongue. He’d been much quieter in the days following the return; at least it prevented Zeb from chasing the droid around the ship, yelling something about how he was going to dismantle him.
A small smile played at the corner of her mouth, but it fell away almost as soon as it surfaced. Sabine turned her gaze to the left to see Kanan facing the ladder that led up to the Phantom. She felt her heart ache as her eyes landed upon the bandages that masked his eyes, as if a ghostly fist had slipped through her chest and grabbed hold of it as a means of stress relief. Sabine’s features creased into a sorrowful expression before she turned and stepped back into her cabin, briefly studying the empty spot from earlier before lifting the airbrush. She’d had quite enough of this silence.
Ezra paced the perimeter of his cabin, his mind clouded with thoughts of the afternoon. Of course he should have known that wandering beyond the makeshift fence of sensors would lead to a run-in with those creatures. Of course he should have known that Sabine and Zeb would be the ones out searching for him if he had been missed. Had he not managed to form a connection with the krykna, both of them would be--Ezra didn’t even want to think about it. Nothing’s changed since Malachor. The people you care about will only continue to suffer as long as you’re around them.
He paused his pacing, leaning down to pick up his old backpack from the corner of the room. The pack had barely been used since he had first come aboard the Ghost, but it had its uses from time to time. His fingers brushed against the triangular shape of the holocron inside, hesitating before pulling it out and feeling the weight of it in his palm. He narrowed his eyes at its dim glow, folding his lips together as he traced the outline of the pyramid’s golden tips. This is all we have. Ezra’s shoulders slumped as he allowed the reality of the fact to finally settle in. This holocron was the only thing that had come out of the ordeal, and if it couldn’t be opened, Kanan, Ahsoka… everything they had given up to Malachor would amount to nothing.
The subtle pulsations of the pyramid’s crimson glow made the thing look like it was laughing; at him or the situation, Ezra didn’t know. A brief flash of anger--an emotion he refused to acknowledge since returning from Malachor--took hold of him. He clenched his jaw, tightening his grip on the Sith artifact before he flung it across the room. It hit the wall just slightly below Sabine’s painting--which she had touched up more than once since she’d first created it--and bounced off with a dull thud that Ezra doubted anyone else on the ship had heard. He almost laughed; it was as if the thing was mocking him. It’s all your fault, it taunted. If Ezra didn’t know better, he would have sworn he heard it cackle, that cruel, knowing voice that spoke to him at the temple. Everything that happened there on Malachor, you are the one to blame for it all. Ahsoka is dead, Kanan is blind, and what do you have to show for all that loss? Nothing.
“Shut up,” Ezra muttered to the silence of the cabin, ignoring how inane it felt to be offering a verbal reply to something that wasn’t even actually speaking. He almost laughed at the notion of the scene. The faint light emitting from the holocron appeared to illuminate more of the room than it actually did, casting an eerie blood-red shadow over the flaking brushstrokes that decorated the wall. “I got you out of Vader’s hands, didn’t I?” That had to count for something.
Except he knew it didn’t. He knew that whatever information was present within the Sith holocron was useless until it could be opened and accessed. Ezra folded his lip between his teeth, leaning over to pick up the artifact from its place on the ground before moving back to sit on the bottom bunk. He turned it over in his hands, staring blankly at its surface. He was no Sith, that was a simple fact.
One must be a Sith, or think like one.
Ezra had to bite down harshly on his tongue to keep from screaming; the metallic taste of blood filled his mouth soon after. He clenched his fist around the holocron, nearly flinging it across the room a second time. The remembrance of Maul’s words felt like a punch to the gut, but he couldn’t deny the sliver of truth that lied within them. Maybe there was still a way.
Unless you take risks, do what must be done, there will always be limits to your abilities. Ezra shut his eyes, the holocron clutched tightly in his grasp. Maul’s words echoed through his head, imprinting themselves in subtle patterns inside of his skull. Your anger is a wellspring, you must use it. Faces flashed across his mind: Vader. Maul. The Seventh Sister. Maul. Agent Kallus. Maul. Inhale. Your passions give you strength... Rex. Ahsoka. The Ghost crew. His parents. Exhale. And through strength, you gain power. Ezra’s eyes flew open. Scarlet light illuminated the bottoms of his eyes, blue and red merging together to create the illusion of a twilight sky within his irises.
You must break your chains.