Chapter Text
Ezra Bridger is rather known for his rash, impulsive decisions, but this one? He thinks the only reason no one has come to skin him alive yet is because Kanan finally had a heart attack and they’re giving him a funeral.
Go impersonate some bounty hunters, Hondo said, it will be perfectly safe and give you good intel on where the Empire is planning their next attack, Hondo said.
Well screw you, Hondo. He thinks bitterly, rubbing his rapidly bruising skull from where his head was slammed against the wall when the real bounty hunters caught up to him and decided that stunning him was too easy after they disarmed him. No, they had to make it painful.
There are two bounty hunters, one of them has cheeks so sunken his skin clings to his bones, a pale pallor to the dark blue skin that clashes with his brown cowboy hat and red eyes, and the other has teeth so sharp he’s surprised she doesn’t make her tongue bleed every time she eats. Or brushes it against them or, anything, really. It seems painful.
He tried to point that out to her, and that’s probably why he’s currently nursing bruises to his face as well while they left him in their tiny cell to, in her words, ‘shut up and learn his place.’
His wrists are handcuffed, a fact he’s displeased by, and his lightsaber is across the red electric door of the cell on a table a few feet from him. They’re taunting him with it. Not even subtly. He’d feel a little more insulted if it was subtle.
“Ezra Bridger,” The second bounty hunter says, licking her lips like she’s tasting his name. He resists the urge to curl his lips in disgust. He doesn’t understand how she already knows his name. Hondo was a scumbag, but not that much of a scumbag, he just ‘happened’ to ditch him right when the first sign of trouble appeared in their periphery. Oh god, Kanan is going to have a field day with this after all his griping about how Hondo is untrustworthy and a backstabber and all that shit.
“It’s actually Jabba, Jabba the Hutt.” He replies, dropping his hand from his head. She studies him for a moment, and seems to see it in his eyes that he has a building headache, because she raises her voice to a pitch that hurts.
“If you’re Jabba, I’m the Emperor.” She hisses, stepping forward, and pointing an accusatory scaled finger at him. Ezra is not sure what’s wrong with this woman. From first glance she looks like a human woman albeit way more fit than the average woman, and then from the second everything about her looks wrong. There are scales up her face and her hands and her tongue is forked like a lizard's, long hair pulled into a tight high ponytail that makes the skin of her face pull back in a way that looks painful.
Ezra is not one to judge, okay, he takes that back, he’s very much one to judge, but the longer he looks at her the worse she looks because something is not right with her. “How about we just chalk this up to a mutual misunderstanding, I had bad intel, you had bad intel, now we all get to go home before the Rebellion or Empire shows up for one of us, yeah?”
The woman looks like she’s a breath away from turning off the wall between them and giving him another beating. The second bounty hunter puts a hand on her shoulder, pulling her back. Ezra can’t help but think he looks starved, and that almost makes him feel bad for him until his red eyes fix on his. Those eyes look set to kill. Ezra highly doubts he’d be the first one of the day. Impressive considering midnight was six hours ago.
“Zara. He’s got a better bounty over his head if he’s at least half alive.” This hunter has a vague accent, and his words are drawled and husky, like he smokes.
“You didn’t tell me he would be so annoying, Bane.” She snaps, shrugging his hand off her shoulder.
“If I could choose not to work with annoying people I wouldn’t be working with you.” Bane replies cooly. She bristles, but before she can say something nasty, he continues, “The Outer Rim has started the fighting rings again. As long as he wins we get profit. We’d get more credits out of that than anything the Empire would offer.”
Ezra’s stomach twists in his chest. Oh god.
No. Please someone tell him that this did not just get infinitely worse.
“This was just a misunderstanding.” He reemphasizes, lifting up his handcuffed hands in surrender. “If you find my associate you’ll see.”
Bane sighs quietly, and leans forward, hands resting just above his knees, like he’s talking to a child. It’s patronizing in an annoying way Ezra didn’t know adults were still capable of doing to him. “What associate, Bridger? There was no one there but you.”
Damn, Hondo really did leave him with nothing. He should have expected this, but it still hurts. His trust was low for Hondo Ohnaka, at ground level, but somehow, the pirate far exceeded his expectations to go deeper than the Lothal sewers. “His name is Hondo Ohnaka-”
Cad Bane lets out a bark of laughter, standing up straight again, and the sound doesn’t sound like it should be coming from this man at all. “You got swindled by Ohnaka? You're a gullible little Jedi. They don’t make them like they used to.”
“You know Hondo?” The question slips out of him before he can stop it and the bounty hunter huffs. No one knows Hondo. Except for Ahsoka who managed, with effort it seemed, not to immediately sneer at the name when Ezra mentioned him to her. They had a bad past, apparently.
“He was a pain in the ass after the purge. Don’t see him much now.” He says, glancing at Zara, who licks her lips again. She’s staring at Ezra like she’s mildly curious what he’d taste like, and it’s making goosebumps rise across his skin.
Oh please god let Kanan have realized this was an awful idea. Let the others be tracking him. He’d take their teasing for the rest of his life.
“I say fighting rings. The Empire can’t keep ahold of most Jedi they catch these days anyway, the bounties being so high proves that. We’ll let the rings decide what to do with him.” Bane says, turning back to Zara who drags her gaze away from Ezra with what seems like effort.
“Can I–”
“No.”
“Just a bite? Jedi are so rare, basically extinct–”
“NO.”
“But I–”
Bane presses the barrel of his blaster against her skull, and repeats, slowly, like she’s an idiot, “No.”
Ezra slowly inches closer to the corner, as far from them as he can get because holy mother of Lothe Cats this is getting weird.
She backs away, lifting up her hands, and Ezra tries, choking on his words to make a joke. “Partners, they don’t make em like they used to, am I right?”
Cowboy hat looks vaguely amused by that, but lizard tongue scowls. They leave without saying another word to him and he feels the ship leave hyperspace, and his entire body tenses up. He glances at his lightsaber and pistol on the table. If he could just get to one of them he could do enough damage to get off the ship. Then he just has to radio the Ghost and stay off grid long enough for them to find him.
Easy as cake.
He can do this.
He’s not going to give into the pressing anxiety attack because he’s survived on his own before. He knows how to survive. He can take care of himself. Sure having an entire team backing him up is very, very nice but he can do it alone again. All he has to do is get his lightsaber and get off the ship.
Eassy.
His hands are shaking.
He feels around his belt for his com, even though he knows it’s not there, and closes his eyes. Of all the times for him to decide it was his com or his lightsaber he hold onto. Kanan is going to rip him to shreds, and Ezra has no complaints other than Kanan isn’t here to do it to him right now.
Maybe he’s discounting Kanan too much, maybe he’s not the one who had a heart attack, maybe it was Hera, or Zeb, or Sabine, or hell, even Chopper. He doesn’t know. It’s been over three hours by now since he last checked in. His average was two. His head throbs, and he rests it against the cold wall of the cell, murmuring a soft, “Shit.”
When he finds that pirate he’s going to wring his neck. If Hondo doesn’t make a surprise appearance and save him he’s going to be hard pressed to make Ezra do anything with him again.
He breathes out slow, and decides that now might be a good time to practice that meditation Kanan is always on his back about. Look at me Kanan, he wants to say, I’m actually a good padawan in times of distress.
When they come back cowboy hat is in a considerably worse mood, and when he clicks the button that turns off the cell door it’s with a certain moody flair Ezra knows from experience with Stormtroopers means he’s got no patience for talking. He gets to his feet, and Bane grabs the front of his shirt, forcing their eyes to meet, pistol pressed to his skull.
Ezra’s pulse spikes and he inhales sharply, entire body stiff.
“Try anything and I shoot you between the eyes. Got it?”
He nods, and Bane lets go of him, so he immediately lunges towards his lightsaber. His hand closes around it and then something hard slams into his back and what feels like hundreds of volts of electricity writhe through his body and he screams, falling onto his face, convulsing and shutting his eyes tight. It seems to last forever, pulsing and vibrating and shaking until hes curled in a ball barely clinging to the last threads of his consciousness as he says– or he thinks he says– “what happened to the bullet between the eyes?” he doesn’t remember his mouth moving, just the pain like his body was simultaneously overclenching and over stretching at once. Then he’s gone.
#
When he wakes up he’s shivering. He might wake up because he’s shivering, entire body drenched in sweat, sore to bone, but he’s not sure. He’s alone. He knows that instantly because there aren’t any other sounds beyond a low electric hum.
He absently tries his wrists. Not handcuffed anymore, but that almost seems worse. If someone unhandcuffed him, that’s either because they don’t know he can escape most everywhere with enough commitment or they know for sure he can’t escape here.
He’s laying on stone, hard and cold, and empty. It doesn’t hold the electric hum the way metal does, and he guesses he’s not on a ship anymore. Ezra slowly opens his eyes, and blinks against a dull green neon light. String of lights actually. He sees it across from him strung along a dirty cobbled wall. So he’s not in a cell then?
He blows out a breath, braces himself against the pain and sits up. Sharp pain rattles through his body and he presses a hand to his ribs, where a faint ache is still rippling through his back from where he was shocked. His thoughts feel broken, and a little scattered, and he reaches around his belt for his lightsaber or com. He finds neither, and stares down at it, like if he does so for long enough they’ll appear. They don’t, so he looks around the room. It’s small. About the size of one of the bedrooms on the Ghost, gray and green stone, with a single worn bedroll pressed against the far wall and a heavy metal door with bars at the top that the green lights string through.
That’s… okay. That was a choice.
Ezra pulls himself up to his feet, bracing against the wall, and takes a slow, halting step forward. He’s still shivering or shaking –he can’t tell, and what’s the difference anyway?-- and reaches the door, grabbing onto the bars to look out into a hallway. He’s tempted to rattle the bars of the door until a guard shows up, but decides against it. The stone hall is lit by the same line of green string lights, and he’s pretty sure they turn blue at the end of the hall. There are two other open doors leading into rooms that from what he can tell are like his. More cells.
What the hell is this?
This isn’t the Empire because the Empire would be caught dead before making their cellblocks anything but sterile. Not that the lights are overly comforting. They’re buzzing in a way that leaves Ezra unsettled.
Ah, what the hell? He’s already been beat up today. “Hello?”
There’s no response, and the longer he looks at the hall, the more he feels like he got left down here to be forgotten. There are cobwebs, thick in the corners dulling the already dull lights, and stains along the walls. Some of them look like blood.
“The Emperor is going to be very upset you have me!” Ezra shouts, giving the door a light shake.
Still nothing.
Wait, something. Someone is talking. Not loud enough he can hear words, but there’s a murmur in the silence under the hum. A man’s voice. Above him? Deep, but not husky like the blue bounty hunters. Where did they go anyway?
Ezra feels down the door for a handle. The dull lighting makes it harder to see if he’s being honest. He finds it and pulls, heart leaping to his throat when the door swings open with a jarring creeeaaaakkk.
He waits, expecting that at any second someone is going to realize they didn’t lock the door, and come for him. Someone must have heard that. Every inch of his body is screaming that this is wrong and that he should stay in this cell until further notice, but the rational part of his brain argues that now would be a great time to get out of here while no one is here. He listens to his brain, and stumbles into the hall. He glances into the other two cells. Empty, and with more bloodstains. What is with the bloodstains? His didn’t have those. The sight of them makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, so he quickens his limping pace. The sooner he finds Kanan and the rest of the Ghost crew the better. They’ll figure out what to do about his lightsaber later.
Is he underground? The air smells musty.
He reaches a corner and presses his back against the wall, gingerly looking around it to another empty hall with empty cells. He half expects to see large, robed figures out of the corners of his eyes as he passes the dark rooms, and it almost feels worse when he doesn’t. He clenches his fists, forcing his breathing to slow so he can stay quiet. He turns another corner and enters a large, circular room that leads off into two other hallways. Both empty.
The room is lit by blue neon lights again, buzzing faintly like an angry bee. This one houses a large communications table, that looks like its been dead for the better part of a millennia, a control panel that looks maybe a year or two newer that sits next to an odd line cut down the wall. He moves over to that to inspect it. Something moves in the corner of his eye and Ezra jumps, pressing his back against the wall as there's a soft shuffle of broken glass and watches a large spider–and he means large, he would have to hold it in both hands if he wanted to touch the gray and white striped monstrosity– crawl across the broken metal top into the closed off middle.
His heart is in his throat. Literally in his throat.
He whips back around to the panel and guesses, pressing all of the buttons at once that one of them must do something. The lights have power. Something else must.
The long line in the wall cracks open into a set of doors which leads into the jankiest elevator he’s seen in his life. And he grew up in the slums of Lothal. It looks like a literal cage, with a rotting wood bottom, rusting metal barred walls and what might be a camera in one corner.
Ezra stares at it, and decides that he thinks he’d rather try his chances with the hallways. That thing will send him to his death quicker than the Empire could ever dream of doing. He tears his eyes away and chooses the first hallway he sees and finds another set of hallways with more empty cells.
Oh hell he’s not going up that elevator.
It ends up circling around to the second hallway entrance and he realizes with growing panic his only option out of here is the death box.
Oh hell he is going up that elevator.
He searches the hall again, and finds a second set of doors that he opens and then jumps as several guards appear behind it, and he’s almost relieved when at least five blasters are pointed at him.
“Sir, the Jedi woke up.” One of them says into a com device
“Would you believe I got lost?” he asks, and they don’t laugh, because of course they don’t. “Where is this?”
The head guard it seems puts his com away and points his blaster at Ezra too. “Boss wants to see you.”
“Where is this?” He repeats, stepping back. They file into the room, circling him like a pack of wolves, and he lifts up his hands, trying to figure out the best way out of here. There’s not an immediate exit so he starts walking, considering his advantages. His wrists aren’t handcuffed, and… that’s about it. They know who he is, they have his lightsaber and there aren’t any vents he can climb into. Unless he gets backup soon he’s not sure he can actually escape this.
The head guard looks over at him, and then starts walking. The others force him forward, and he repeats his question again, deciding he’s going to do that until someone answers him.
“Haxx fighting rings.” The guard says gruffly.
“You’ve got bad luck kid.” One of the guards says, smiling when Ezra looks at him. They’re all dressed the same, painted black armour, long sleeve shirts, cargo pants and blaster holsters and boots.
“No. Just bad friends.” He replies, thinking of Hondo.
He’s still looking for some convenient out when they exit the hallway and go above ground. Air rushes into his face and they stop in front of a large barred door. There’s cheering and booing, and he can see in the distance the clash of blades and an arena.
Oh god.
They wouldn’t throw him in immediately, would they?
He sees the second opponent, much larger than the first fall, blood spraying from their neck. The fighter is a boy. Small, thin pale yellow skinned, frecked with small horns on his head, wearing a worn cotton shirt and harem pants that are discolored hanging on his frame. He’s younger than Ezra.
One of the guards presses his lightsaber into his hands and they open the doors and promptly shove him out into the ring. He loses his balance and falls onto his face, scrambling up as a voice says over very loud speakers: “And look what we have for our last fight of the night folks! A relic from before the Empire, a practitioner of the Traitors, the JEDI!”
The crowd boos, and Ezra’s gaze jumps around his surroundings. A large sandy arena, a boxed in amphitheater where the stands are jam packed. Every species Ezra can think of is here, and some new ones. Guards are cleaning up the body as the boy turns to look at him with curiosity.
“There’s been a misunderstanding, I’m not supposed to be here!” He shouts back, heart thudding in his ears he glances back at the metal bars behind him. Can’t leave that way, the only way is if he can somehow jump the fifteen feet wall between him and the stands and then he’d have to get past all of the people.
The announcer ignores him and continues, “Will the jedi beat our long standing champion? The Dathomirian, Head Pikes? Only one way to find out! Get into positions, three… two..”
Ezra gets into a fighting stance, and refuses to get closer. The boy gets into a crouch to sprint to him.
“ONE!”
Head PIkes sprints towards him and Ezra ducks out of the way, pushing him back with the Force. Where the hell is Kanan? He should be here. Ezra should not be here right now. He’s starting to panic, because what if they’re using this as an opportunity to finally be rid of him? He was pretty sure they actually cared about him but he could have been wrong. He’s been wrong before. He tightens his grip on his lightsaber, switching the blaster part of it to stun. The kid moves too fast for him to get a clear shot.
There’s murder in the boy’s eyes, and he barrels at Ezra like a bull, but Ezra doesn’t think he knows the horns on his head are dull. He ducks out of the way narrowly, and the boy skids to a halt, unsheathing knives.
“I don’t want to fight you.” He says slowly, and the boy lifts up his knives.
“Shame. I wanna fight you.”
They enter what isn’t really a fight, more like Ezra ducking out of range of the blades and then away from the kid. It’s like avoiding a very young, very bull-like stormtrooper. The kid finally gets in range when Ezra slips on his footing, nearly letting the kid plunge the knives into his throat. The kid misses, and there’s anger, but still that curiosity in his eyes, like Ezra is something he wants to study. Behind that is exhaustion. He’s been fighting all day. Shadows under his eyes.
“We don’t have to fight.” Ezra says and the kid snorts.
“They will beat you to an inch of your life if you don’t fight me.”
Ezra already feels pretty terrible, he’s not sure what else they could do to him at this point really. He shrugs. “I can take that.”
The kid stares at him, and then takes that moment to lunge for him, knives out large eyes full of fear. “I can’t.”
Last minute instinct is what makes him do it.
That’s what he has to tell himself over and over as his thumb presses down the igniter on his lightsaber and the kid stops attacking him. The kid stops doing anything at all, actually. Ezra’s blade goes through the kid’s chest like he’s cutting butter, and he deactivates the blade, scrambling away, his own chest heaving as he realizes what he just–
Oh. oh god. He just–
Distantly it occurs to him that the crowd is cheering. He would feel disgusted if the feeling could make it around the rising horror in his chest. He turns off his lightsaber, falling to his knees, and barely managing to catch the other boy. He’s dragging in wheezing breaths, and he’s going to asphyxiate. Ezra’s entire body locks up and he starts to hyperventilate too.
“Oh FUCK!” He wheezes, hands hovering over the hole in the teens chest. The Zebrack reaches out with a shaking hand and Ezra grabs it, flinching when the boy squeezes it tightly, trying to press out words around his rapidly discoloring features. His face is turning blue. Oh fuck oh fuck oh karablast oh fu–
“It—adhhhh– it's ok-kkkkkkk-kkay.” He exhales, hitching breaths making him stutter violently. His head lulls, eyes spasming in his skull.
“No it’s not it’s– fuck! FUCK. Kanan–” the jedi’s tongue catches in his throat. He can’t call Kanan. Not here. On the fucking Empire he just– “I’m sorry–”
“Okkkkkkkk…” The boy stutters, never making it to the last syllable of the word as his chest falls and doesn’t rise. He just stopped breathing. Oh god. He just died.
The crowd is cheering so loudly his ears feel like they might pop.
Ezra just killed someone.
He just KILLED SOMEONE.
He can’t even remember the kids name.
Ezra can’t feel his body. The boy’s hand slackens in his grip as his eyes stare at nothing. Oh god. Oh GOD. The crowd is no longer cheering now that they’ve realized Ezra isn’t soaking in their adoration. They might be booing now he can’t tell. Disgust curls up inside him at them and himself and bile rises in his throat.
It rises and it burns and then he’s vomiting.
All over the arena, it won’t stay in his throat and the smell of everything is too much and he can taste the smell of burning flesh and he– oh god. He stares at the kid, the body. He’s going to be sick again. He can’t stop vomiting and arms wrap around his body, dragging him upright and away from the burning flesh. That does help, but he can’t get the image out of his head.
The guards try to make him walk but he’s unsteady and falls over instead, so they drag him by his upper arms and it occurs to him they didn’t take his lightsaber so he tries to fight. He ignites the blade, and a hand wraps around his throat from behind. He lets out a wheezy exhale of air as he’s dragged back by his throat, and the hand tilts his head up.
He stares into the face of a warm skinned man with round features. It contrasts with everything else that’s sharp about him, narrow eyes tall, skinny, a green headscarf like the lights from before wrapped around his head, flowy purple robes brushing against Ezra’s hair. He has a lip ring that looks disgusting. Ezra leans away from him as he leans over him.
“I wonder,” He starts, grip so tight Ezra can’t breathe. “How you would fight if we broke your dominant hand? Perhaps we should try that if you don’t deactivate that blade right now.”
Ezra deactivates his lightsaber and drops it, clawing at the man’s hands, his voice croaking and quiet. “Let go!”
The man tightens his grip a fraction more, enough that the bruises will ring his throat and then lets go, dropping him. Ezra gasps for air, falling forward over his legs, bracing a hand against the dirt. They’re inside a building now, and he doesn’t know when that happened.
“Who the fuck are you?” He demands, glancing back at him.
“Show more respect to the ring master.” one of the guards snaps, grabbing him by his hair. The other man lightly slaps his hand.
“Let him go. We treat our winners better than that.” The way he says that makes Ezra’s skin crawl and he remembers all over again that he just killed someone. He just. Oh god. OH GOD. he’s shaking, and he thinks he’s going to start dry heaving. “Keep up this streak and you might last longer than two weeks.”
Ezra stares at him. Two weeks? He doesn’t want to step foot in that arena ever again!
Kanan has to be looking for him. Ezra rescued him from the Empire’s prison. If nothing else, Kanan owes him this as a favor.
“If I were you,” He starts hoarsely, rubbing his throat. “I’d let me go. My family is going to come for me and you’ll regret all your life decisions when they do.”
The ring master squats down in front of him, resting his arms on his thighs. His fingernails are manicured and painted black, and he has gold drop earrings Ezra can’t quite understand the symbol of.. “Oh my dear boy, you’re here because you don’t have a family.”
That’s not true. It’s not. Then why, a nagging voice in the back of his voice says, haven't they come for you?
Ezra rubs his throat, and he sees his blade cut into that kid again and again like a repeating broadcast. He can’t get it from behind his eyes. He killed him. He killed him.
“I think it’s about time I show you what our winners get, mmm?”
He drags him up to his feet, ignoring the guards who let him go at some point but Ezra can’t remember when and makes him stumble through the halls, down to the lower levels. It’s older down here, most of the doors aren’t automatic and the room he takes him to is stone, different from the one he woke up in, and empty except for a single, small cage that can’t be wider than ten feet by six feet. Ezra knows without needing to ask that’s where they’re going. The ringmaster drags him into it, and puts his wrists into shackles high above his head and smirks as he starts shaking.
Ezra is filled with utter loathing for this excuse for a human as his arms start to burn.
The man smiles at him and then pulls a vial from the folds of his robes, uncaps it and lifts it to Ezra’s lips. He refuses to drink it, so the man makes him, and he stumbles away, back hitting the bars of the cell. It tingles down his throat and tastes sour. Poison probably. He doesn't know. He’d deserve it because he just killed someone. Oh god oh god oh god.
The ringmaster pats his cheek. “Good luck little jedi. You’re in for a long night.”
And then he sweeps out of the cage, locking the door and leaving the room.
Ezra stares after the man and a deep bitterness swells up inside him as he tries to ease the pressure in his aching arms. He can’t do much, and his throat aches. So instead, he closes his eyes, rests his head against his arm and curses Hondo. The kid is in his vision, dying over and over and over like corrupted footage. Ezra would very much like to slap Hondo right now. He’s going to blame the pirate for this forever, he thinks.
He reaches out through the hollow feeling force for Kanan, can’t find him and closes his eyes. Kanan, please come find him. He needs someone to skin him alive for his bad decisions. Please, Kanan, the thought is desperate and pleading, please.
His head is so loud and the memory of the kid dying so vivid that he doesn't notice the screaming until it's right next to his ear, and then all his body knows is panic.