Star Wars rebels Abducted

Chapter 21: Giving In

Kanan was alone in his room.

That wasn't odd, most of the members of the Ghost were. Even Hera had spent enough time in the cockpit that it had been dubbed 'hers.' There wasn't much for anyone to do.

Repairs had taken shorter than anyone had expected. While the outside had been properly patched together by Axel's droids, the inside circuitry that Chopper hadn't been able to re-wire had been a mess. But because there was nothing else to do, it had squared itself away pretty quickly.

Now, the only thing happening was traveling. They were heading back to the Outer Rim, towards the asteroid where Ezra had been kidnapped on, to try and search for clues about where he could be now. They didn't have much else to go on.
But that would take days: days that were otherwise filled with brooding and guilt.

Kanan sighed. Hera had done her best to drag him out of his stupor, but she had only partially succeeded. He was not so naive to think that there was nothing else he could have done to save Ezra. It was his fault that his Padawan hadn't been able to defend himself. If he had just been a little faster, more focused, more determined, he could've seen the Tie, could've sensed it, gotten out of the way.

Instead he had been weak. Slow. Un-focused. Afraid.

Everything a Jedi was not.

Kanan had only been a child when the Jedi Order had fallen. Granted, most Jedi children were expected to be able to control themselves to some degree, to grow up following the ways of the Jedi. Kanan hadn't been too successful at that when he was a Padawan. Now he wasn't a child. And he still couldn't follow the rules right.

And because of his mental failure to do what had been ingrained in him since the age of two, Ezra was now suffering.
Kanan wasn't just speculating that, either. He wasn't just making the worst out of the situation to try and deepen his guilt. He would sometimes feel, though muted, Ezra's cries for help through their Master-Apprentice bond. During the first few days after he had been taken, the pleas had been few and far between. Now, they were constant, almost timed, everyday. It was as though the Inquisitor was anxious to cause him pain. What frustrated Kanan to no end was that there was no way for him to reach out to Ezra, to console him. His Force signature just wasn't strong enough. There was no way of completely blocking off one's reception to the Force: it flowed in and through all life-forms, connecting them, holding them together. But whatever the Inquisitor had done to his apprentice, Kanan couldn't connect with him, no matter how hard he tried.

It was almost as if the Force was taunting him; showing him a tasty scrap of meat before whipping it away at the last second. But Kanan knew better. The Force was the Force. It didn't have a personality or a set way of being, it just was. It did as it saw fit. Nothing more. Kanan just wished that it could do so a little less painfully.

A knock echoed through the metal walls, originating from his door. No doubt it was Hera, coming to stop him from judging himself to hard. The Twi'lek always seemed to be able to read him like an open book, no matter how hard Kanan tried to close himself to her.

"Come in," he said, voice cracking from disuse. He rose from his sitting position on his bunk to look at Hera. But it wasn't the friendly green-faced Twi'lek's emerald eyes that bore into him as soon as the door opened.

It was Zeb's big neon green ones.

"Well, this is a surprise. Whatcha need?" He rubbed at a crick in his neck that'd come from sitting down to long.
The Lasat exhaled a large breath before talking.

"Well, y'see, Kanan... the Empire's broad-casted a message. Out to all of the Outer Rim. We... we intercepted it, 'cause we just now crossed over into Outer Rim territory, see, and well..." Kanan raised an eyebrow. Zeb was being hesitant, almost cautious.