Ezra's face was formed into an expression of weariness. With the Ghost in hyperspace, Kanan had summoned every crew member to his quarters. There, Hera, Zeb and Sabine sat; the last of the three the closest and possibly the most worried. Hera was next to Kanan, whilst Zeb sat the farthest away from both Kanan and Ezra, his bo-rifle lying next to his crossed legs. Sabine's dual WESTAR blaster pistols were spread between her and Hera. Ezra and Kanan knew full well that the safeties were off. Kanan's lightsaber hung at his hip, along with Ezra's own. Ezra sensed the force barrier the ex jedi was maintaining, while he kept his own down.

Every precaution had been taken in case Maul would try for Ezra's person again; two blasters, both ready to fire, and with his lightsaber in Kanan's hands behind a force wall. That seemed to reassure Zeb and Hera, though Kanan and Sabine had their reservations. Ezra wasn't completely confident at this point that the reservations he had would be his own by the end of the day.

"Repeat that again." Hera said, exercising the matriarchal authority Ezra had grown accustomed to in his early months aboard the Ghost. He sighed.

"I told you," He began, staring Hera straight in the eye. He wouldn't have done that in the face of the twi'lek's authority before. "One minute I was walking down a hall, the next I saw three inquisitors." Ezra swiveled his eyes to met Sabine's which were narrowed in concealed worry and suspicion.

"I ran, got stuck in a room full of magda guards-" Ezra fell silent, sensing Kanan's urge to correct him. Ezra guessed the ex jedi had some type of grim respect for them. He certainly did. "Magna guards-" Ezra corrected himself, "And was forced to fight them. After I survived that, Maul attacked."

Ezra had been saying those exact words or a variation of them for the past thirty standard minutes. It didn't matter how much he repeated them, it seemed he couldn't satisfy anybody. Oh, Kanan did his best to hide his dissatisfaction, but Ezra had sensed the feeling within his mentor a few minutes earlier. Zeb finally rose, stretching in his unceremonious fashion.

"Well, kid, or whoever has been jawing at me for the past half-hour," He said. Ezra's face showed hurt for a moment before he masked it. Hera at that moment was glaring sourly at Zeb's fury face, whilst Kanan and Sabine caught Ezra's momentary slip. Sabine had been frowning from the beginning, and as Ezra had talked, and it got deeper. It deepened further, much to Ezra's increasing dismay, when the mandalorian saw hurt crossing face.

The door closed behind Zeb with a hiss and Hera followed, to give what Ezra guessed was a very harsh talking to. The edges of his lips were beginning to form into a small smile. It was then extinguished by his cynical side, which pointed out that nothing was likely to come of it and he probably wouldn't get to see it.

Ezra rose without speaking, followed a respectable time later by Sabine. Eventually she'd tracked Ezra to his old bunk in Zeb's quarters. He sat on top of it, shoulders hunched temple resting against hands with intertwined fingers. He didn't seem to notice the mandalorian as she entered. The two were alone - well and truly alone. Zeb might come in, yet Saine was pretty sure he'd be punching or eating the stuffing out of something right now; the former because he viewed Ezra much in the vain Sabine did, like a younger brother, and the latter because he was hungry. Sabine cleared her throat. Ezra looked up, saw her, then directed his eyes back to his old bunk.

"Ezra," Sabine began, hesitating. She was unsure of how fragile Ezra might be, or if she was even talking to him. She wasn't sure if he was even confident that she was talking to him.

"Are you alright?" Goddamn it, Sabine. The mandalorian chided herself. That's the most-

"I don't know if I'm myself." Ezra said. His tone was a flat; monotone. Not a guilty monotone, like when he got caught doing something, no. It was dead monotone; not the type Sabine had even gotten used to over the past week. This wasn't an attempt to push her away, yet it also wasn't necessarily an attempt to continue the conversation. The silence between them, for Sabine, was unbearable. With an unusual amount of hesitation for her, she approached the ladder that lead to Ezra's bunk. He didn't stop her when she climbed it, nor when she sat beside him.

For several moments Sabine was motionless; every time she'd dealt with Ezra in the beginning, his attempts at flirting made him dismissable; when the flirting had stopped, wandering eyes and hubris had made him amusing in a way. Now… nothing. Sabine was truly out of her element. So was Ezra, she reasoned, yet it still didn't give her any idea of what she was supposed to do. Part of her suggested a hug, while the other suggested simply staying the way she was. Then, suddenly, she felt a weight against her shoulders. Sabine's head swiveled toward the source of the weight, only to find that it was Ezra.

Ezra's head, specifically, but the rest of his left side soon joined the fray. Sabine felt heat creeping up her face. Brother and sister, or however they thought of each other, this was unprecedented. Yet Sabine found herself with a conundrum; if she moved, she'd risk Ezra waking up, and that situation would be intensely awkward. Yet if someone walked in…

Kriff it, Sabien thought to herself. If someone walked in, who said she had explain herself? She was doing more than the rest of the Ghost crew right now.

Yavin IV, with it's dense and attractive forests, struck Sabine as incredibly sardonic at the moment. The cockpit of the Ghost was engulfed in a somber silence. Every member of the crew, save Ezra, who Sabine was confident was sleeping as soundly as he could. Zeb sat to Sabine's left, leaned back in his chair with a resigned expression on his face. Kanan was as neutral as ever, while Hera's expression was of similar disposition. Sabine's face was a frown; the type that told people "Stay away from me". Of course, it was hidden behind her helmet, whose brightly painted exterior also felt sardonic at the moment.

The door to the cockpit slid by, revealing a cloak-wearing Ezra; it was the same he'd worn to Cholestar. Dirt-brown and with the hood raised, Sabine realised that had the hood completely obscured his face, she wouldn't have recognized him. The hood began to turn in her direction and she looked away.

The mandalorian's attention returned to Yavin's surface; she could just make out the temple The Alliance was using as a base. There was little activity, with only a smattering of ships landing or leaving into space. The Ghost touched down on a landing pad, immediately surrounded from all sides with rebellion troopers. Hera lowered the boarding ramp, Ezra leaving the cockpit first. His boots clicked against the polished floor of the Ghost in a fast-paced rhythm. Kanan was close behind him, with Zeb at his tail and Sabine lagging behind to stay with Hera. The pilot took a few moments to collect a small blaster pistol that fit snuggly into her breast pocket. Sabine saw worry in her eyes for a moment before they steeled themselves. The mandalorian followed behind her captain silently, blasters set, rarely, to stun.

Normally she had them with either the safeties off and in her cabin or on and on her person; with Ezra being the way he was recently, the safeties had been on constantly. Maul had ruled her home world once, and that came from cunning and machinations with the once-numerous criminal cartels that littered the pre-clone war galaxy. Now whatever was left of them were drifting from outer rim world to outer rim world, desperately avoiding Imperials or their peers. Sabine had once seriously considered serving the Black Sun - but Ketsu had stopped her from going down that path. Now Ezra was following that dark path; becoming fatalist, apathetic, and cripplingly isolated. And Sabine couldn't do anything about it.

Maul was once again before the nightsister altar; unnatural green light danced across his skeletal and drawn features, showing the tattoos that ran down his cheeks and nose. His eyes, a vibrant, disturbing shade of yellow reflected the altar's light. His hands once more gripped the ring of the basin, nails brushing lightly against the rock. Hs shoulders were hunched slightly, with his thin mouth in a determined frown. Ezra was asleep at the moment, but it would soon not be so. The boy hadn't been taken over before because Maul was fatigued - he wasn't so now. With a preparatory breath through his mouth and out his nose, Maul began the ritual.

Within minutes the color of the altar's water had changed from green to red; moments later it began to bubble; a few seconds after that, Maul delved once more into Ezra's psyche.

This time he met organised resistance, but resistance that when met with the full brunt of Maul's psychic might, crumbled fest enough. This time, when he got to Ezra as a being, he was demoralised; he'd watched his life collapse again. Watched as maul tore into his mind and used his own experiences against him.

After pushing against Ezra's will, it broke, and maul found total control.

He manipulated Ezra's body to leave the cabin he'd been assigned to with his mentor, grabbing his lightsaber via channeling Maul's force power through Ezra. Opening the door; two guards stood in Maul's way. One looked to see what had caused the door to open and, once more channeling the force through Ezra, Maul choked both guards to death slowly. When they fell, Maul had Ezra's body make it's way to a hangar, where he was met with several ships; most were fighters, unfit for Maul's purposes. Some were freighters, rusted and modified in an attempt to make them flyable. One, though, caught Maul's attention: it was shuttle, but more importantly, a shuttle whose class had hyperdrive capabilities.

Forcing Ezra's body to lead itself to him, Maul had it board the shuttle, whose boarding ramp was down, likely to do repairs. Whatever the reason was, Maul eventually, through Ezra's form, found and killed every being aboard. Most were unarmed, and went down with little effort, bar a bulky zebrak male with a vibroblade. Maul then directed Ezra's body to the cockpit. There he had it raise the boarding ramp and set a course for Dathomir's system. It wouldn't be on a map - Talzin had caused enough trouble for Sidious that he'd had the planet erased from Galactic records. Finally, Maul manipulated Ezra's body into going into one of the ship's cabins - dropping his lightsaber along the way - and breaking the locking mechanism, trapping it.

Confident that the routes he chose were obscure enough to not be found, and that any possibility of the ship being tracked was moot, Maul gave Ezra control of his body once more.

The road to this point had been long, too arduous, and complicated; but it was over. Ezra was Maul's to train; to make into whatever he wanted the youth to be. The boy's mentor didn't stop Maul, nor did any of his allies; there was a possibility of Sidious getting his way, yet maul doubted that. In the next few weeks, maul would take Ezra's malleable and shattered mind and mend it, repairing it with the dark side. Ezra was already fit, yet maul was sure turning him into what he was could be done; with a lightsaber, and given the correct circumstances, he could perform admirably. But he had so much more potential; he emanated the force, was a beacon of it. A beacon that could be changed to suit maul's purposes given enough time. The training would be brutal; a complete rebuilding of Ezra's psyche. And with maul as his master, Ezra could certainly be all those things. All he had to do was push.

And Maul was certainly willing to push.

AN: That's a wrap. I sincerely hope you've enjoyed what my mind has come up with since - god, has it been this long? - December. I originally considered giving this story a happy ending where Maul is beaten, but no; the situation I made would make that ending contrived or dumb. Still, though, I'm not done with Ezra yet, and it's still up in the air for me as to whether or not Maul will make Ezra his everlasting apprentice - I have an outline, but, how long before the first chapter is up I'm unsure. It could be a day, week, or even a month. I don't know.

This has really been enjoyable for me; one of the main reasons I did this was because, in all honesty, there are numerous fanfics that aren't the best in this category. I can spend hours - a weekend, even - to write a chapter, yet other stories that might not have the same variety of vocabulary or many typos get two or three reviews overnight while I can and have easily struggled to get 1. I just don't get it - can any of you point me in the right direction for answers? I'm honestly baffled by this and it has really been bugging me as I wrote this story.

Whoo. Rant over. I don't mean to offend, but I'm sure I will do so to some. Just needed to get that off my chest. And that's about it; thanks to Killerkitty641, UnfathomableFandoms, ja54591, and Rose Eclipse. You have been - UnfathomableFandoms especially - key in motivating me.

Now the final paragraph; 12,463 views, 38 reviews, 49 follows and 35 favorites. That's several fold what my other stories have gotten, even when combined. I'd like to add a final thank you to just staying with me. Until Ezra gets tortured again. Any and all follows/favorites/reviews will be duly noted. - Raging Celiac