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Ezra sat on a crate inside the small medbay, his back tucked safely against the corner of two walls. The room was dark – Hera had said it was best to keep the place looking empty – so the only light came from the bacta tank built into the center support structure. The tank filled the place with a dull blue glow, wavering with the trickle of bubbles that slid along the glass.
It was a stalemate. On the other side of the room, Hera and Zeb argued in low voices with the medical droid. Kanan couldn’t be moved, but they couldn’t take him out of the tank, either. The droid made it sound like he should be in there for days, according to proper protocol. Hera was trying to negotiate the absolute minimum amount of time before they could get him out, and Zeb was growling about how a Jedi with the Force could get stabbed in the back in the first place.
Ezra kept quiet and out of the way, hunkered down in his corner. He levitated an old datapad between his hands for practice to pass the time – and as a distraction – while the minutes dragged on. Sabine crouched near an open window high up in the medbay’s wall, keeping an eye out for patrols.
It was a bad situation all around.
Ezra didn’t want to agitate Hera further by voicing his opinion about what they should do. He focused on the datapad instead, glancing up in short bursts, taking in the sight of Kanan in the tank a little at a time, until he could better handle it.
It was the first time he’d seen Kanan get really hurt.
It felt unreasonable and immature to think of Kanan as invincible. Ezra shook his head at himself. Of course Kanan was just a person: mortal, vulnerable, and as organic as the rest of them. Of course he could get hurt. But…seeing it, for real, for the first time, was…
Well, it was sobering.
It reminded Ezra that they weren’t just playing games with the Empire. The fight was real. The struggle was real. It was dangerous. He’d thought he knew that already, but having the reminder suspended before him of all they had to lose was a slap against his face. Ezra winced at the internal pang of guilt for not being there when Kanan needed him. For not knowing enough to know that even he, his master, could get hurt.
The arguing across the room intensified, but wasn’t really going anywhere. Ezra set the datapad aside and slid down from his seat on the crate. Hands tucked into the back pockets of his jumpsuit, he moved on quiet steps towards the tank, careful to keep his head ducked low and just out of view of Hera, in case she turned her vehemence on him.
He looked up at Kanan in the blue.
Ezra didn’t know a lot about bacta tanks. All he knew was that bacta was supposedly some miracle gel that could heal just about anything, if it had enough time. Kanan had been stripped down to just what he needed to preserve modesty – any other time, Ezra would have snort-chuckled at that – and floated now suspended in a clear tank full of the stuff. Cuffs at his wrists attached to cables and wires kept him mostly still and monitored his vitals. A breathing apparatus over his mouth and nose fed him oxygen. His hair had been let out of its usual tie, and hovered around his head like some kind of halo.
Or snakes, Ezra thought, watching the way they swayed side to side in the liquid.
Ezra looked him over, only a little guiltily for how he took advantage of Kanan’s inability to hide. But…he’d never seen so much of Kanan before.
It wasn’t just the physical, though that told a story in itself. Space was cold, and it only seemed right that most travelers in ships should cover themselves up. Protect themselves from the elements, or unexpected turns of gravity. Sudden losses of air pressure. Of course Kanan covered up.
But Ezra found himself wondering, now, if at least part of that was also to cover the scars.
Kanan had a lot of scars.
Some of them were small. Round, with jagged edges. Those were blaster wounds. Others were long slashes and gouges. Lightsabers, maybe? Some kind of blade. Ezra bit the inside of his cheek as he looked up over Kanan’s calves and arms and chest, realizing that he knew next to nothing about him. He didn’t know where Kanan had gotten any of those scars. He didn’t know where he came from – Coruscant, presumably…the Jedi temple – or what had happened to him after the Empire took over. What he must have done to survive.
In the short time they’d been together, Ezra felt like Kanan knew a lot more about him than Ezra did.
He looked up. Kanan’s eyes were closed. Was he asleep, or just unconscious? Did people dream when they were in bacta tanks?
Ezra squeezed his hand tightly closed at his side. He relaxed it with a breath, then – carefully – reached out to lay his palm tentatively against the glass. It was warmer than he’d expected, and he could feel the faint vibrations of machinery attached to it. The passing bloat of bubbles.
He closed his eyes.
Please be alright, he thought, still unsure about a lot of things where the Force was concerned. But Kanan had said a lot of it was about connections. Ezra didn’t know if he would hear him – or if he could hear him, where he was – but he reached out anyway. Sought that connection. Please be alright…
Then, he saw something.
It was quick. Not even the space of a blink. Ezra saw like he was seeing through someone else’s eyes.
Another bacta tank.
A woman inside, her hair behind her woven in intricate braids.
A spark, like a connection. A sense of knowing. Of familiarity. But how could that be? He’d never met her before and he’d been in the temple all his life so he should know more or less every Jedi Master who passed through there she looked so striking he would definitely remember seeing her before…
Then Ezra remembered something else.
The first time he saw Kanan. He’d been on that rooftop in Lothal. Capital City. He saw him from behind, down in the street, and there had been…something. He didn’t know what it was at the time, but it felt like a spark. A connection. A familiarity with someone he’d never met before.
“Is that the way it’s always been?” Kanan’s voice…though it didn’t sound like him. Younger. More shrill. “Does the Force choose peoples’ padawans? Or do the masters decide for themselves? Or do they decide because the Force told them to? Does the Council do it that way because that’s the way it happened before, or did they just decide…?”
Ezra kept his hand on the side of the tank, reaching out, looking for Kanan. Refusing to pull back even with the surprise imagery – memories? – that bombarded his thoughts.
Please be alright, he focused on repeating, over and over. Please be alright…