Saga - OT Take Me Home | post-Rebels AU—drama, angst | Sabine, Ezra

I want to say thank you to everyone for your comments on "In Service to the Empire". I appreciate them very much and I plan to come back to do full responses. Right now though, I'd like to go ahead and post the first part of what will hopefully be Marathon Swimming event. It was meant to be the 1500 Word Sprint, but it laughed at that word count and kept going. I'm quietly freaking out at the thought of committing myself to this particular event, especially with this particular story. It's going to a departure in length and tone from what I've been doing lately, and I'd like to post it before I change my mind. So thank you for understanding, and may I present:


Title: Take Me Home
Genre: Drama, Angst
Characters: Ezra Bridger, Sabine Wren, Thrawn
Timeframe: Ca. 9 ABY
Synopsis: Ezra has spent nearly 10 years as Thrawn’s captive when Sabine finally arrives to take him home.

Notes: This idea was inspired by the Angstmongers Anonymous First & Last Lines Challenge. The lines that I received were “Why won’t you talk to me?” and “I have my orders.” The story is inspired in part by Phil Collins’s song Take Me Home.
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Part One

9 ABY, Mount Tantiss:

“Ezra? Ezra! Why won’t you talk to me?”

The figure on the other side of the ion containment field looked like Sabine, overall. Her hair was shorter than he remembered and a dark indigo-purple shade he’d never seen her color it before. The design on her beskar’gam was different, too. Sabine used to change her hair and armor often, though, so that didn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t her. And the voice was definitely hers, if pleading and a bit desperate. But Ezra wasn’t sure she wasn’t just another hallucination.

Sometimes, Ezra had hallucinations on the days they took his blood. They never took enough to make him seriously ill. Ezra, or at least his blood and memories, were too important to Project Necromancer for them to risk killing him. But they came as close as they dared, leaving him light-headed and listless in the aftermath.

And when that happened, it was harder to hold the voices at bay. Kanan, Hera, Sabine, Zeb, his mother and father, even Thrawn—they whispered to him in waking dreams that sometimes seemed more solid than the dreariness of his cell.

So, no, he couldn’t be sure this was really, truly Sabine.

And if she was, what could he say to her?

There had been a time when Ezra knew exactly what he wanted to say to Sabine when she arrived to take him home. During his meditations before that last battle on Lothal, he’d had a vision in the Force of her leading him back to his old comm tower; that fleeting image had sustained him through the early years of captivity. (Was this how Sabine had looked in his vision? He couldn’t remember it as clearly as he used to.) The thought of her had been his lifeline through all the scientific procedures he’d been subjected to, the blood drawing and memory scraping. Throughout the long, empty nights when there was nothing to do but think, Ezra had constructed endless scenarios of what it would be like when Sabine came. He knew just what he’d say to her and what she’d say to him; he’d played every scenario over and over in his mind countless times.

But all those pretty words and heartfelt declarations had crumbled to dust and blown away years ago.

“Ten years,” Ezra said finally, his voice bleak; it sounded faint and scratchy from disuse. There really wasn’t anyone to converse with here, unless he wanted to talk to himself. Sometimes, he spoke to the scientists and guards, just to keep in practice, but they treated him as if he was less than Human, and Ezra guessed that to them he probably was.

And Thrawn, of course, but those conversations had become more infrequent lately.

On the other side of the ion field, Sabine winced as if he’d slapped her. “Ezra, I’m so—“

“It doesn’t matter,” he rasped. It didn’t, really. Whether she had the Galaxy’s best reasons for staying away or just couldn’t be bothered to look for him until now, he wasn't getting those years back. “I’ve been waiting for you for almost ten years. I’ve been alone for ten years, cut off from the Force.”

“What?! How? I thought… I mean, I’m no Jedi, but Kanan said the Force was everywhere and in every living thing, so how…?”

“Ysalamiri.” Ezra wasn’t surprised when Sabine frowned as if he’d spoken Gree. He’d never heard of the creatures either until they became the bane of his existence. “They’re these weird repto-mammalian things from some obscure Outer Rim World Thrawn discovered in the Imperial Archives. According to him, they somehow create ‘bubbles’ that suppress the Force—and if I’m in one of those bubbles, I can’t use the Force any more than you can.”

Sabine let out a startled oath in Mando’a. He didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded violent and angry, and that captured Ezra’s feelings towards the little beasts quite succinctly. He’d thought his gambit with the purrgils had been pure sabacc, but Thrawn had had a skifter up his sleeve all along. “Thrawn had a special unit of troopers who carried ysalamiri on frames on their backs. It was all over for me, even before they broke into the Chimaera’s bridge…”

-----

0 BBY, Somewhere in Hyperspace:

Ezra couldn’t sense the Force.

There was no warning. One moment, it surrounded him. The next, the Force-dome that Ezra had constructed to shelter himself and Thrawn from the void of hyperspace popped like a bubble and his connection to the purrgils snapped like a thread. He grappled after it but found nothing, not even a whisper. The Force was just gone.

Around him, strobing lights pulsed and strident klaxons blared as the Chimaera’s emergency systems attempted to lock down the bridge and seal off the shattered view port before the oxygen ran out. Ezra had just enough time to catch the triumphant gleam in Thrawn’s blood-red eyes before the door to the bridge imploded and a wave of stormtroopers with strange tubular devices slung over their shoulders surged in, blasters drawn. Without the Force, without his lightsaber, Ezra was just one man against the squad; his last conscious thought was that the number of stun blasts that hit him was definitely overkill.

Ezra woke up in binders, slumped across from Thrawn in a cramped shuttle. The Grand Admiral’s smug expression was even more unpleasant up close than it had been from across the Chimaera’s bridge.

“Welcome back, Commander Bridger,” Thrawn said in a voice like a purring nexu, affable enough at the moment but with a definite undercurrent of I-can-kill-you-whenever-I-want. “Or may I call you Ezra, since we’re going to be spending quite a bit of time together in the future?”

“No.” Ezra rasped. He sounded like Zeb with a sore throat and his mouth felt like he’d eaten an extra-large bowl of sand mixed with Bantha wool. His head ached. His muscles ached. His everything ached. And he still couldn’t sense the Force.

He wished his head were clearer so that he could come up with a reason for that. It shouldn’t have been possible for the Force to simply vanish. It was present in all living things, so Ezra should have been able to feel something, no matter how faint, emanating from Thrawn and the four officers—one on each side of Ezra and one on either side of Thrawn—who were also seated on the shuttle’s passenger benches. Each of the officers, Ezra noticed, was carrying one of the strange arrangements of tubes and straps that he’d seen on the troopers who’d stormed the Chimaera’s bridge. There was a shape attached to each of the frames, a mossy, green-brown lump. It took Ezra a moment to realize the lump was actually a creature, but as far as his Force sense was concerned, it might as well have been a rock. As he tried to determine what exactly the furry, lizard-like thing was, it slowly raised its head and blinked at him with dull black eyes.

“Well, Commander Bridger, I see you’ve discovered my ysalamiri. You’re very perceptive, even without the Force to guide you.”

Ezra must have started or made some small involuntary sound of disbelief, because Thrawn smiled like the tooka that caught the convor. “Oh, yes. I know that you are quite without your Jedi abilities now. Would you like to know why?”

Of course Ezra wanted to know why, but he’d rather have taken another dozen stun blasts to the head than giveThrawn the satisfaction of asking.

Ignoring Ezra’s silent glare, Thrawn continued, “When the Emperor gave me the task of bringing you to him, I began to ponder the question of how one could neutralize a Jedi. In the course of my research, I discovered an intriguing reference to the planet Myrkr. There’s no reason you would have heard of it.” There was a tiny sneer on the word “you” just enough to convey where he felt Ezra, current Rebel and former street rat, fell on the intellectual spectrum. “There’s very little there in terms of civilization. However, its native fauna have some unusual characteristics. The planet’s apex predator hunts by using the Force to track its quarry. Consequently, their prey, the ysalamiri, evolved the ability to create dead zones in the Force in which Force sensitive creatures such as the vornskrs—or a Jedi—can’t use the Force.”

Ezra’s throbbing head pounded even more as he tried to process this. His first thought was that Thrawn had to be lying; he certainly wouldn’t put it past him. It seemed inconceivable that any creature would be able to negate the Force that way, never mind the sleepy-eyed lumps that were the ysalamiri. Still, there they were, and here he was, and the Force was…just not there. And Thrawn had an insidious way of using the truth as a weapon, a needle-sharp blade to find his opponents’ vulnerabilities and twist just so.

But, cuffed and surrounded by Imps and ysalimiri, Ezra was in no position to determine how much of the truth there was to Thrawn’s story, or what he could do to escape the ysalamiri’s influence. He turned away from Thrawn without speaking and closed his eyes, partly because he really was tired and partly because he hoped it would annoy Thrawn. Despite the uncomfortable bench, his aching head and racing thoughts, Ezra soon fell asleep.

———
to be continued

 

Wow. Just. Ten years is a ghastly horrifically long time. There truly is no getting that back! All the words, all the joy, hope, and other fine emotions have been sucked totally dry.

for tackling this particular Olympics event.

 

Poor Ezra, in trouble in captivity. What will happen to him?
Great to see you writing the swimming marathon

 

Fine song to prompt a swim of this sort ...

Awful, to have the basis of one's being vacant ...

That's pure evil, cold and calculating. Brrr.

 

I still need to review your first entry, but I'm skipping ahead to this one because I was so intrigued by this plot bunny the first time you mentioned it in Angstmongers Anonymous, and I'm even more intrigued now that you've started writing it!

Excellent details here, and the way in which Ezra relates them feels very in-character. There's an almost casual matter-of-factness to the narrative that says as much about his mental state as it does about the things he has been enduring all these years. One such blood draw, or even a handful, might not seem like much. But to have it done repeatedly, regularly, for years and years, and for them to take enough that it consistently makes him lightheaded and causes hallucinations? Yeah, that's... that's intense. And he just... accepts it. The line between what is and isn't real has been blurred so badly and so often that he can't know for sure whether it really is Sabine in front of him, and that hurts.

Again, it's just that casual, matter-of-fact acceptance that makes this hit harder. What can he say to her? What does it matter anymore?

This was another great detail and a spot-on character insight. I can't imagine Ezra would have stayed completely silent even if he had no one to talk to. But I can also see such "conversations" falling by the wayside more and more as the years go on, as monotony and despair creep in.

It feels almost wrong to laugh, but I did chuckle at this. Definitely overkill.

I could hear Lars Mikkelsen in these lines.

lol

More excellent Thrawn characterization. I've never been particularly interested in his character outside of TTT and Rebels, possibly because I find that few writers are able to capture his voice; but I think you've nailed it here.

Yep, that's Thrawn all right.

This is off to a great start, Raissa! I look forward to finding out more about Ezra's time in captivity, as well as seeing how he'll handle being reunited with Sabine in the present.

 

Ooooooh. Angsty Ezra is angsty and evil Thrawn is evil, and these are the perfect ingredients for a good story. I love the combination of canon and Legends elements with the ysalamiri and Project Necromancer and Mount Tantiss (which now pulls double duty in both continuities). It makes very much sense that Thrawn would have an ace up his sleeve to keep Ezra under control once he had him aboard his ship, and you have Lars Mikkelsen's Thrawn down pat. This bit:

... encapsulated the character perfectly.

I'm tempted to say that I have a fairly good idea of what happens next in the past, but I sense that this line:

... carries a whole lot of story that I'm looking forward to reading!

 

Okay, catching up...

Thank you! Dotheby really is meant to be a fundamentally decent guy; I wanted to stay way from the Evil Headmaster trope with him. I thought it would make for a more interesting tale if Ezra was converted to the Empire's side gradually rather than warped or brainwashed into it.

Glad you enjoyed this story as well as Imperial Youth, and I'm glad that you find Ezra in character here. The goal of my Infinite Ezras project is to create as many different versions of him as I can while still keeping him recognizably Ezra. He's such a compelling and multi-faceted character that, even if there isn't an infinity of Ezras, there's a huge variety! As for Dotheby, I kind of picture him as one of those people who, because they’re decent, see the best in everyone—even in the Empire, which is, after all, the Legitimate Government (TM). He’s almost like a Hera to this version of Ezra in that he’s guided Ez into becoming a good, responsible young man. And I think you’re right that if he and Ezra ever discover the fate of Ezra’s letters, it’s going to change the way they see the Empire.

Dotheby is a good person--as large as the GFFA is, not everyone who was aligned with the Empire could have been evil. And he's been a good influence on Ezra and the other boys in the Tarkin Home. (And in my mind, the ISB has been reading Mira and Ephraim parts of Ezra's letters, in an attempt to get them to betray other Rebel sympathizers on Lothal, but they've been confiscating any responses).

Thank you! Y'know, there had to have been plenty of ordinary, good people who simply accepted the Empire as their government and believed whatever the Holonet broadcast about what was going on with the Rebellion. One of the things I found interesting about the show Resistance was that it portrayed a character, Tam Ryvora, who had a neutral view impression of the Empire because her grandfather had been employed in on of their shipyards. Dotheby is a compassionate man who just happens to be employed by the Empire. I'd say he's probably a little naive and has a narrow view of galactic events, but he really does care about the boys at the Tarkin Home.

Yes, you know that Ezra is always in my heart, even if Canon has shipped him off to the UR (eh?) for an extended amount of time. GrimDark!Ezra is one version of him I don't think I could write, at least not easily, but I wanted to play with the idea of Ezra being a true believer in the Empire, and in a way, in this 'verse he becomes a believer the same way he came to the Rebellion--by having a kind, patient mentor.

This has been a tough story for me to write at times because Ezra is so hopeless here. Ten years is far too long for him to be away from his family, and that seems to be what they’re setting up in Canon. (Sabine is there at last, though, so although Ezra can’t get those years back, they can move on together).

Ezra has a lot in store, but unfortunately not a lot of it is good. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pull off this event in time to finish the Olympics, but I do hope to complete it before Canon catches up to me.

This is possibly the hardest loss I’ve had to inflict on Ezra. I had to come up with a reason that he didn’t just Jedi mind trick his way out of things, but, oh man…it was hard to take away the one thing that would be of solace to him. He can’t reach out to find his friends or even make friends with a nearby creature. He has to deal with everything on his own.

That’s Thrawn for you. I had the scene where Hera has been electroshocked by Gov. Pryce and he comes in with her family kalikori and tells her she should be glad he has it so her family won’t be forgotten. He is so suave about it, but he’s just twisting the knife. Psychological torture is still torture.

Thank you! I’m glad you are enjoying it so far. I’ve written a few small angsty pieces, but this is my first major incursion into angst, and it’s challenging— in a good way.

It hurt to write Ezra in this state; he has been through so much by the time Sabine arrives that he’s almost numb. Like the narrator in the Phil Collins song, he’s gotten to the point where it’s easier not to feel or care, to tell himself “I don’t mind…”

Exactly. He can’t conceive of anything better anymore.

I tried to imagine what Ezra would do during all the time he was in captivity—what his captors would allow him to do, since they wouldn’t want him to have anything that could be used as a weapon against them. There couldn’t have been much left for him except talking to himself.

It feels almost wrong to laugh, but I did chuckle at this. Definitely overkill. [/quote] A little dark humor…but it also shows just how afraid of him the Imperials are. They’re not taking chances.

I could hear Lars Mikkelsen in these lines. [/quote]
Mikkelsen was spot on perfect casting as Thrawn, one of the few instances when a character sounded just like I imagined.

Well, thank you I think there’s a balance to making him menacing with out him becoming Uber Evil Genius, and I’m glad you feel I’ve gotten it right.

[/quote] Thank you so much, and thank you for your support and advice in the Angstmongers thread

Thank you! I don’t know if any of my conjectures are anywhere near the mark, but Canon Thrawn has à ysalamir sculpture and Project Necromancer seems to use the blood of Force sensitive beings in some capacity, so it seemed reasonable to but them together. Or at any rate, it’s fun to dig into the SW toy box and put All the Stuff together I’m glad you feel Thrawn is in character. He’s always struck me as someone who doesn’t (directly) dirty his hands with violence, but he can eviscerate his opponent with a few cutting remarks. There is indeed a lot of story left between Thrawn and Ezra, and it’ll definitely include some snarky banter. Thanks for commenting and hope you’ll continue to enjoy it.

Thank you; you know it wouldn’t be here without your support and encouragement You and I are on the same page as far as what canon seems to be setting up for Ezra especially given everything thing he’s already gone through in his young life. It hardly seems fair that he will be away from his Spectre family longer than he was with them! I do feel bad about cutting Ezra off from the Force, but I couldn’t see any reason he wouldn’t have tried to return to the Spectres if he was able. Of course, with or without the Force, he’s not going to make things easy for Admiral Blueguy He’s stronger than that, and Thrawn has already underestimated him and what he’s willing to do for his family, his world and the Rebellion.

 

Take Me Home
Part 2
————
9 ABY, Mount Tantiss

“Stay with me, Ezra!”

Sabine’s voice brought Ezra back to his cell. He’d gotten lost in his memories again, something that happened fairly often. It wasn’t so much that dwelling in the past was all that pleasant, but at least it made a change from the unchanging tedium of Mount Tantiss.

He blinked at Sabine, half surprised that she was still there, in the same form. The Sabine of his hallucinations usually changed hair color two or three times during her visitations, and sometimes melted into Hera or his mother— once or twice she’d even morphed into the Second Sister, the better to taunt him.

But today (Tonight? Hard to tell through the cell’s tiny, barred window), Sabine’s form remained constant, with the same short-cropped, indigo hair. Ezra didn’t know how he’d come up with that particular style, but he kind of liked it. It accentuated her eyes, and she’d always had beautiful eyes.

“Stay with me,” Sabine repeated. She had stopped whatever it was she had been doing at the nearby access terminal and was frowning at him in— concern? (It was an expression Ezra rarely saw, unless the doctors were fussing over his blood counts.) “Talk to me. Where did the purrgils take you— and how did you wind up here?”

Ezra considered how best to answer her. It was a long story, and he wasn’t sure how long he had to tell it before either the guards showed up (assuming this was really Sabine) or she vanished like a popped bubble (if it was just another hallucination). And if this was a hallucination, telling her his sad, sorry tale was just a waste of his breath and time.

Not like he had a better use for his breath and time…

Ezra sat down cross-legged on the floor, so he wouldn’t alert the guards by scraping his weighted chair across the room. No one had ever bothered to tell Ezra exactly what happened aboard the Chimaera after he’d been stunned, but he managed to put the pieces together; the Imps seemed to think the ysalamiri rendered Ezra deaf and stupid as well as Force-blind. “Once I lost contact with them, the purrgils came out of hyperspace so far in the Unknown Regions that it wasn’t on any nav charts. I think they tried to get us to safety, though, because they brought us out almost right over New Coruscant.”

“New Coruscant?”

“Yeah, one of the Imps started calling it that as a joke.” Probably Vann, Ezra thought. Unlike most of Thrawn’s men, he’d had a sense of humor and had been marginally more tolerable than the others. “It was this tiny, uninhabited world stuck out in the middle of a patch of empty space. Lots of grassland and forests. Three moons. Kind of reminded me of Lothal in some ways…Only…not…”

————

0 BBY, “New Coruscant”, the Unknown Regions

The shuttle came down hard in an open grassland on the small green world below the Chimaera, gouging a hundred-meter gash across the prairie. It was soon joined by a second shuttle and a squadron of TIE fighters, which carved the bucolic landscape into a series of deep ruts and disabled ships. Over the next few days, the Chimaera’s escape pods made planetfall, pitting the ground with craters. It cut Ezra to the quick to see the damage that Imperials had inflicted on this world, because the meter-high grass standing in green-gold waves and the eggshell blue sky above them reminded him painfully of home.

No one bothered to tell Ezra what was going on. He was just a prisoner and this was, of course, All His Fault. But the Imps, being Imps, weren’t exactly discreet, so he quickly gleaned that they were going to be stuck on the planet (claimed in the name of the Emperor and ironically christened “New Coruscant”) for a good long time. The shuttles’ sensors picked up no technology readings and the scout parties’ didn’t find any indication of primitive society or even sentient life.

None of the small craft, the fighters and shuttles, were equipped with hyperdrives, and assuming any of them could still get off the ground, there was no way to know if there was another planet in their fuel range. And while all of them were equipped with emergency beacons, no one knew if the beacons were even strong enough to broadcast a signal back to the Empire. The technical officers thought they might be able to boost the signal, but with limited parts and equipment, they didn’t know how much or how long the process would take.

Ezra watched Thrawn’s jaw tighten and a muscle above his left eyebrow twitch a little bit more with each new revelation of just how deep a pile of bantha poodoo they were in, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit of satisfaction. Was it too much to hope that the twitch became permanent?

Thrawn caught him looking, and something hard and ugly flashed in his eyes before being swept away by his usual look of cool derision. “I fail to see why you are so amused, Commander Bridger. As I told you aboard the Chimaera, what happens to me, happens to both of us— except that you’ll be enduring it in binders and isolated from the Force that gave you your power. Your friends may have won a temporary victory on Lothal, but whatever you hoped to gain by your stunt with the purrgils has failed.”

“Did it?” It wasn’t the Jedi way to gloat to your enemy, but given his enemy and his circumstances, Ezra thought that a little bit of gloating would be justified. “Because from where I’m sitting, it looks like a complete success.”

The officers gathered around Thrawn chuckled and elbowed each other— Listen to him. Crazy Jedi, who does he think he is?— while Thrawn favored Ezra with another supercilious smirk. “Really? What an interesting definition of ‘success’ you have.”

“Well, I wanted to take out one of the Empire’s top military strategists and his command ship, and I did that.” Ezra couldn’t help grinning as he added. “Single-handedly, and without firing a shot. So, yeah, mission accomplished.”

The Imps broke off their laughter in mid-chortle, and Thrawn’s smirk evaporated. He crossed to where Ezra was sitting cross-legged on the ground, and glared down at him. “You are currently alive because I still have use for you, Commander,” Thrawn hissed. His jaw was set in stony planes, but Ezra saw Thrawn’s brow was twitching again— which only made him grin all the more, and that just made Thrawn’s glare colder. “Captain Vann,” he snapped. “Since Commander Bridger has nothing useful to offer at the moment, please escort him back to his quarters.”

Vann, one of the officers equipped with a ysalamir and its nutrient frame, hauled Ezra to his feet and marched him off to his “quarters”— “cell” would have been more accurate— the shuttle’s smallest cargo bay, one of the few available spaces with a locking door.

“You’ve got guts, kid,” Vann commented, roughly ushering Ezra into the hold. “I’ll give you that. But I wouldn’t poke this particular rancor too much if I were you.”

“I’m touched by your concern,” Ezra replied as the door swished shut between them. He knelt down on the thin sleeping bag that was the only accommodation in the otherwise empty space. He reached out to the Force, but was still unable to sense it; Vann had taken up his station outside the door.

But even if Ezra couldn’t feel it, he knew the Force was still there. All of this was temporary; he’d be going home soon. He knew he could count on Sabine. Ezra laid his hands on his knees, inhaled deeply, and called her image to mind, his vision of the two of them walking hand-in-hand to his old communication tower, and began to meditate.

 

Ezra can sure stand up to Thrawn. I hope Sabine will rescue him

 

Loved Ezra's snarky defiance

 

Poor Ezra, confused as to his present reality but soldiering on anyway ...

He may not have the Force, but he has innate connections to his surroundings.

I can picture the grin!

 

I just love the whole mental image of the Chimaera stranded on a faraway planet with Ezra defying Thrawn in every possible way. Thrawn knows that they're in trouble and that getting away from New Coruscant is going to be a challenge indeed – although, for all the eyebrow twitching, he's already looking to the future, because I suspect that the "use he still has for Ezra" is the Mount Tantiss operation, and that Project Necromancer was plan B in case plan A failed, which it did.

Vann comes across as decent, to the extent that Imperials can be decent in this context, but seeing what became of Ezra in the future, he probably wasn't able to do much, if he was even willing to try.

The end of the flashback, with Ezra telling himself that "he’d be going home soon", that "he could count on Sabine", and then calling her image to mind was all the more heartbreaking, because we as readers know how long it took her to find him, and when he does, he's not sure that the image he's seeing is real.

Can't wait to see where you take this story next!

 

This was a clever take on a Ezra and Sabine reunion.
Ten years alone, cut off from the force, with only his memories to guide him.
Ezra definitely feels changed but oddly similar. I can practically feel the emotion in Sabine's tone as she begs him to speak radiate off the screen.
It definitely feels like more could be said here, it feels like we get a brief window into either period of time. Whether it be the "present" with Sabine or the "Past" so soon after his capture. I'd love to see more with this.