At the sound of the door opening, Ezra looked up. His eyes narrowed as the Jedi entered the room, rage rising up in his throat like bile, choking him.

"Sabine's going to be fine," Jarrus said.

Ezra averted his eyes, tightening his arms around his knees, which were pulled up against his chest. Even that small movement made the chain connecting the cuffs around his wrists rattle slightly. The sound dug into Ezra's mind, irritating something buried deep beneath the surface. He wondered if the sound was attached to one of the memories the Jedi had stripped from his mind. More than a few times over the months since he'd lost his memory, something small like a sound or a word would feel significant even though he could never figure out why.

"She'll have a black eye for a while, but you didn't hurt her that badly," the Jedi said. "And she's not mad at you."

"Why should I care about that?" Ezra snapped, tearing his gaze away from the floor to glare up at the Jedi again. He knew exactly what Jarrus was going to say next. It was the same lie he'd told Ezra every day in the two weeks since he'd been captured by the Jedi and his crew.

"Because she's your family," Jarrus said, kneeling down across from Ezra, who mentally recoiled from the sincerity he heard in the Jedi's voice and felt in the Force, as if he really believed what he was saying.

"She's not my family," Ezra hissed. "None of you are."

Jarrus reached out a hand toward him and Ezra flinched back against the wall, silently cursing himself for his display of fear.

"I'm just taking those cuffs off," the Jedi said. With a wave of his hand, the binders opened and fell to the floor. Ezra stared down at them for a moment before turning his gaze back to the Jedi, a sharp thread of suspicion weaving its way through his mind. Why would Jarrus remove his restraints after Ezra had just attacked a member of his crew?

"Ezra," Jarrus said, his voice soft, with just the slightest hint of desperation to it. "Please talk to me."

"I have nothing to say to you," Ezra spat. His eyes stung with tears as he averted his gaze, once again looking down at the floor. It was agony, having to spend every day facing the man who'd violated his mind, tearing away his memories until he was little more than an empty shell with almost no knowledge of who he was. He hated Kanan Jarrus with the burning intensity of a hundred stars. He wanted nothing more than to attack, to make the Jedi feel the same pain and terror he'd felt when he'd woken up to find his mind empty, stripped of everything that had made him real.

"Then just listen," Jarrus said. "Please. Maul lied to y-"

"There's nothing you can say to make me turn against my master," Ezra said, cutting the Jedi off before he could add another word to his web of lies.

"Ezra, he's not your master," Jarrus said. "He altered your memories to make you think he is."

Fury burned in Ezra's chest like a flame just under his heart as he stared at Jarrus, his eyes widening slightly. After everything he'd done to Ezra, everything he'd taken from Ezra, he was trying to convince Ezra that it had never happened, that Maul, his master who'd taken him in and taught him and protected him, was the one who'd destroyed him.

Before Ezra even realized what he was doing, he'd launched himself at the Jedi, taking him by surprise and pinning him to the floor, one hand squeezing around his throat.

"Liar!" he shouted. He drew back his fist and slammed it into Jarrus's face, feeling a sharp sense of satisfaction at the sound of his knuckles hitting flesh. "You did this to me! You took my memories!"

As he drew his fist back again, the Jedi reached out, catching Ezra's wrist in his hand. His other hand closed around Ezra's shoulder and pushed, throwing Ezra off of him. Ezra gasped as his back hit the floor and the air was knocked from his lungs. As Ezra pushed himself up onto his knees, the Jedi did the same, coughing and gasping as one hand rubbed at his neck. As Ezra drew himself back into his own head, the pure rage that had driven his actions fading just slightly, fear coiled through his chest like a tendril of frost on transparisteel. The Jedi had already proven himself capable of hurting Ezra in the worst possible way, and for a moment, Ezra froze up in terror at the thought of what Jarrus might do to him now.

"He's the one who lied to you," the Jedi said.

"No," Ezra said, his voice shaking. "I'm not letting you trick me. He said you would try and I'm not falling for it."

"I'm not trying to trick you, Ezra," the Jedi said. "I know you can sense that."

"No," Ezra muttered.

The Jedi gave a soft sigh. He almost seemed…sad? Something about it didn't seem right.

"Your name is Ezra Bridger," Jarrus said. "You were born on Lothal. Your parents were arrested for treason when you were seven years old. How would I know that if I didn't know you?"

"You could've found that out when you took my memories," Ezra said. "It doesn't mean anything."

The Jedi's mouth pressed into a tight line for a moment as he reconsidered what he was saying. When he spoke again, his voice was almost too gentle, as if he thought Ezra was going to break at the sound of it.

"Our bond is still there, Ezra," the Jedi said. "It's still as strong as it ever was. How do you think it got there?"

Something buzzed in the back of Ezra's mind, as if that poisonous bond itself was now trying to convince him, too. His hands began shaking as he desperately tried to block the feeling out. His master had already told him about the bond, how the Jedi had forced it on him to make it easier to destroy his memories. His master had helped him block the bond, but hadn't been able to break it.

Just thinking about the bond made that buzzing grow more intense. Ezra threw his hands over his ears as though that would block it out and shook his head vigorously.

"Stop," he muttered. "Get out of my head."

"I'm not doing anything," Jarrus said. Ezra shook his head again, trying to ignore the gut reaction that told him the Jedi was speaking the truth. "Just open our bond. You'll know I'm telling the truth."

"I can't," Ezra said, his voice barely above a whisper. Some deep-seated instinct, one he had no idea the origin of, screamed at him to just reach out, to trust the Force even if he couldn't trust the Jedi.

"What are you afraid will happen?" the Jedi asked.

Everything.

What if Jarrus took his memories again? What if he went further than that, destroying Ezra's mind completely? What if he really wasn't lying? What if he was lying, but Ezra learned that his master was lying, too, and he was forced back into that terrifying emptiness he'd been trapped in before his master had reminded him of who he was?

"Trust me, Ezra," Kanan said. Kanan. Why was he thinking of the Jedi as Kanan?

Ezra didn't trust him. He didn't. He couldn't. But he trusted the Force. He trusted the first thing he'd really remembered after he'd woken up on Dathomir. And the Force was buzzing so loudly in the back of his mind that it almost drowned out the Jedi's voice.

Slowly, his heart hammering, Ezra reached toward the barrier his master had placed in his mind, gently pushing it aside.

Almost instantly, a flood of emotion crashed into him. He knew, instinctively, on the level that he knew he needed oxygen to breathe, that the bond wasn't what his master had told him. It hadn't been forced on him. It had formed naturally, a bond between him and…and his master. His real master.

Slowly, Ezra raised his head, looking up at the Jedi - at his master.

He still didn't remember.

Ezra dropped his gaze back to the floor, hugging his arms tighter around himself as tears stung at his eyes.

"Are you okay?" Kanan asked.

"I don't remember," Ezra said, his voice breaking. "I - I know who you are, but I don't remember anything."

For a moment, Ezra stared blankly down at the floor. As his next thought hit him like a runaway speeder, he abruptly looked up at Kanan again.

"He did this, didn't he?" he asked. "He took my memories and made me think you did it."

"I wasn't there," Kanan said, knowing instinctively who Ezra was talking about. "But I think that's what happened."

The tears Ezra had been trying to fight off began to spill from the corners of his eyes. He buried his face in his hands and didn't even notice that Kanan had moved toward him until the Jedi's arm was around his shoulders. Ezra leaned against Kanan's side. It felt so familiar, like he was built to fill this space, but he couldn't remember why.

"You might not have your memories," Kanan said, his voice soft, "but you can make new ones."

A hard lump formed in Ezra's throat, so heavy that he felt like he couldn't breathe. He wanted his old memories back. He wanted to know how he'd met Kanan and whether his parents were really dead and why Maul had done this to him. New memories weren't going to answer the questions that he had or fill the void that he'd fallen back into the moment he'd realized Maul had been lying to him.

"How do I know this is even real?" he asked, his voice sounding so ragged and heavy that he barely recognized it.

Kanan hesitated and Ezra found himself once again gripped by sheer terror. He needed an answer. He needed to know he wasn't being used and lied to again.

"I don't know, Ezra," Kanan said. "Just…trust your instincts. They've always steered you right before."

Ezra clenched his jaw to stop it from trembling. He supposed that was as good of an answer as he could expect, but something still burned painfully in his chest at the thought that there was no way to really know.

Kanan's arm drew tighter around Ezra's shoulders.

"It's good to have you back," he said.

Ezra said nothing. He simply stared down at the floor, his eyes unfocused. He wished he could feel the same way, but he just couldn't remember this place and these people.

It all felt like home. And he had no idea why.