Star Wars rebels Abducted

Chapter 19: Odd Pep-Talks

There was silence aboard the Ghost.

They had failed. They'd failed to restore their crew, their family. For all of their hard work and planning... they had failed.

Everyone felt the blame on their shoulders. Kanan hadn't been strong enough. Zeb and Sabine had been useless. Hera had taken them all away. It was useless to assign blame when they all felt it had been their responsibility that the mission had failed.

The only thing that the three action-oriented Spectres could think of was Ezra, dangling in the air helplessly. Because of them. Because they hadn't got there in time, and because they didn't have the ability to fight against the Inquisitor. The pilot thought of nothing more than that with every second they did nothing, her youngest, fragile Spectre was being tortured. Turned against them. Warped.

This was the second time they had abandoned him. The second time they had run away from Ezra while the Inquisitor got what he wanted. This time, though, it had been Hera's decision to leave him. Before, she had left thinking that they had all made it safe. Now she had actually decided to leave him in the clutches of the Empire.

For her, that was the worst decision she had made in her entire life.

The artist was sitting on her bunk, staring at her most recent painting, the one that depicted tham as a family. There was a dead look to her eyes. They had actively ran away from him, they'd knowingly hindered their progress from re-building their family.

She knew that they meant more than anything to the kid. Sabine knew that. He may not have told her directly, but she could see it in the way that he acted around them. They were Ezra's everything.

And they had left him. Alone. Stranded.

It would take them weeks, maybe months to have another chance like that. Another shot at reuniting their family. That had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity from fate, and they had botched it. Now, not only would the security surrounding Ezra become triple secured, but she had a feeling that the bucket-heads wouldn't be as lax with protocol as they had been before. Another rescue chance was almost guaranteed to be impossible.

They had failed him.

The Lasat was in his bunk, alone in his cabin.

It was funny. All the times he had complained that having his room shared by the little twerp now seemed empty. He'd give almost anything just to hear Chopper screaming down the hallways in pursuit of the kid, even to have another bed crash down on top of him.

He stared up at the painting of the two of them that Sabine had drawn on their ceiling. They both looked like fools, all right. But at least they had been there to be fools with one another.

He had been useless. He had only stood there and watched as his little friend was dangled unconscious before him, and had done nothing about it. He had run away. It kind of reminded him of the time that Kallus had nabbed the kid, only he felt about a hundred times worse.

It had only been a few weeks since he had been captured. Only a few weeks, and yet the Imperials had still managed to make Ezra look like a walking corpse. He was strong, no matter what Zeb might say to the contrary. The kid was strong enough to hold his own. But when he had seen the three Spectres at the end of the hall... There had been relief beyond relief of Ezra's face, and it made the Lasat think about what exactly the Empire would have had to do to make the kid want to get away that badly.

Usually, Zeb was content in missions where his main role was to bash together bucket-heads. This time, that had been the only thing he'd done. And what had happened because of it? Ezra had turned into some sort of gruesome puppet, dancing in front of them, with his strings being pulled by the monster of an organism that was the Inquisitor. Zeb had done nothing. And Ezra had been lost because of it.