#*thinks about all the worst ways Eli and Thrawn’s story could end*

[thedistantstorm]

Project Compass 10

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This time: Un'hee is displeased. Ezra stumbles upon a truth. Thrawn forces himself to think logically.

Next Time: Thrawn tells Ezra a story. Un’hee takes matters into her own hands.

-/

“Well?” Vah’nya asked, waiting for Ezra after his training session. At her side was Un’hee, who seemed to bounce with energy despite the ridiculously early hour.

The Jedi pulled a face. “Later,” He grunted.

Un’hee patted his arm sympathetically. “Eli beat you up pretty bad, huh?”

Shrugging, Ezra rubbed at the spot Un’hee had touched. He probably would bruise, but it wasn’t anything Eli did. He looked at Vah’nya who frowned, peering into the training room Ezra had just left. “I think I know what you mean,” He told Vah’nya.

“I-”

“Good morning, Senior Navigator Vah’nya,” Thrawn said evenly. He nodded to her, and then cast his gaze down briefly to the much smaller Chiss beside her. “Navigator Un’hee.” He turned on his heel.

“Wait, you won’t be joining us?” Un’hee asked, voice twisting just short of a whine. It certainly had been the way things had gone for the last three weeks. Ezra pointedly looked away. Thrawn paused, looking back with only the faintest sliver of his gaze. Usually Thrawn never failed to meet a person’s eyes.

“I have other matters to attend to,” The Commander said. “My apologies.”

He didn’t sound remotely sorry, Un’hee thought. In fact, he sounded almost... scattered. The junior Navigator frowned at his back as he left. Then, when he turned the corner, she turned back to Vah’nya and Ezra. To the human, she asked, “What happened?”

“Un’hee-” Ezra broke off.

Captain Ivant exited the training room. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she spun, beaming up at him. “Good morning,” He greeted her, voice soft. “Why don’t you three go on to breakfast?”

“Yes, Captain.” Vah’nya agreed easily, casting a pointed gaze to Un’hee. “Come along.”

“Go on without me,” The younger Chiss crossed her arms. In her most demure tone, she inquired, “Captain, may I have a moment?”

“Un’hee!” Vah’nya snapped.

The Captain exhaled. “Sorry, Un’hee. I have a meeting to go to.”

“Fine,” She said bluntly, then demanded, “Just tell me what you did to him.”

“Navigator Un’hee,” Vah’nya placed a firm hand on her shoulders. “This isn’t appropriate.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Ivant said firmly. His gaze landed on Ezra. “Someone needs to learn how to focus and not be distracted by what happens around them.”

Ezra flushed. “Sorry, Captain.”

“It’s a good lesson. Force, Sight, however you want to call it aside. In a real battle, that would’ve been the end of you.” He nodded curtly to the youngest among them. “Go with Vah’nya, Un’hee.”

Un’hee glowered up at him, her discontent palpable.

“Don’t give me that look, Navigator.”

She crossed her arms and scowled at that, nostrils flaring.

Vah'nya took a deep breath, preparing to reprimand her sister in arms again, but Ivant waved her off, taking a knee so that he was eye to eye with the smaller girl. "I will check in with you after mid-shift."

"I don't like it," The Navigator said. Ivant opened his arms and she wrapped her lanky ones around his neck, seeking comfort for emotions that were not fully her own. With her face buried against his shoulder, she murmured, "I can feel-"

"I know." Ivant squeezed once, whispering into her ear, "I don't like it either."

Ivant inevitably left them after securing Un'hee's promise to mind Vah'nya's instruction in the matter. Only when they were left alone did the trio of Force sensitives make their way to the mess hall.

-/

"So what happened?" It wasn't Un'hee asking, to Ezra's surprise. Vah'nya arched an eyebrow, her glowing eyes narrowed in equal parts suspicion and anticipation.

They sat in the far corner, not their usual table in the midst of the other Navigators and crewsman. Typically when Thrawn was with them, they sat off to one side of the long row of tables near the starboard exit, so that he was not surrounded by the rest of the Navigator children. Not that Thrawn was particularly sociable, the man was more or less a hermit. How he and Ezra seemed to get on so well was strange. The occasional conversations Thrawn had with the rest of the crew were to do with art, recent news, and occasionally battle strategies. Thrawn preferred cultivating his wallflower persona, immersing himself in the goings on around him unobtrusively. Even though Ezra talked to most of the crew and Navigators, Thrawn almost always had the same - and more - information.

Ezra leaned forward and Un’hee scooched closer on the bench, gripping the edges of the table for support. Her toes only touched the floor if she pointed them, so she swung them back and forth, brow furrowing in anticipated concentration. In front of her, her tray went untouched.

“I can’t explain it,” The Jedi said. “I was sparring with Ivant, and it was fine. I actually managed to land a hit - those extra sessions Thrawn’s been giving me are paying off, even if my body aches all the time - and then I felt this,” Ezra trailed off, looking to Vah’nya. “In the Force,” He clarified in Basic before switching back to his passable Cheunh, “It was like,” Ezra paused, thinking. “Agony. Like someone had stabbed me in the chest. It was like a blow.”

“It was Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” Un’hee whispered.

“I think so,” Ezra agreed, solemnly. He didn’t have any other idea, because at the time he’d been shocked still by the weight of the emotion, so used to the endless white noise that was most Chiss in the Force. It was soothing and placid, like a glass sea. Thrawn was usually muffled. Though, when it came to Captain Ivant...

“Why?” Un’hee asked, watching Vah’nya pick at the edge of her sleeve.

“What happened before that?” Vah’nya asked him.

Considering it in his mind’s eye, Ezra closed both of his luminous blue ones, focusing inward. “I’d landed a solid hit, and Captain Ivant grappled me. I managed to catch hold of his under-tunic and get it part way over his head.”

“I see,” Vah’nya murmured. “Where was Mitth’raw’nuruodo in relationship to you?”

“He was in the doorway, watching.” Ezra blinked twice, refocusing his gaze on his half-finished tray. “Captain Ivant was between us when I got up, and that’s when I felt it.”

Un’hee bit her lip and pooled her hands in her lap. “Oh,” She said softly. “He saw them,” She said. “I’ve been waiting for that.”

“Scars,” Ezra said without needing more information. “Like yours?” He eyed Vah’nya. “I couldn’t see them, I was facing his front.”

“No,” Vah’nya frowned. “Far worse. Un’hee told you how Eli was made a Captain,” She reminded the human. “I am not sure humans are meant to survive such damage. It is ugly. That is why he has always sparred with you in near-full dress.”

“He was fine with your scars,” Ezra pointed out. “Why-” The Jedi caught his breath. “I’m such an idiot,” He said. Vah’nya raised one eyebrow in an elegant arch, as if asking if he’d like to proceed. “They were friends. Thrawn sent him here. He feels responsible.”

“Amongst other things,” Vah’nya said cryptically.

“What other things?” Ezra narrowed his eyes when Vah’nya chose not to respond. “What happened that was so bad? They were friends,” He repeated.

“Bad things,” Vah’nya said, and Un’hee shivered. “Things I am forbidden to talk about.”

“What happened with the Grysk that captured you,” Ezra said slowly. “It,” He swallowed. “It wasn’t Thrawn’s fault, was it? We weren’t anywhere near there. I don’t-”

Vah’nya looked away. Ezra fell silent.

Un’hee pushed her uneaten tray toward the center of the table and whispered, “I never want something so horrible to happen again. That is why we must become stronger.”

-/

Thrawn paced. He was used to spending more time in his thoughts than out of them, after all, he was both a warrior and a tactician. Still, this evaded him. Rationally, logically, this should not have impacted him to the point where the tuning fork that was Ezra Bridger was able to sense his sharp emotional distress. Frankly, Thrawn did not believe he should have had such a fierce response to begin with. He needed to see this tactically. He could not afford his emotions to skew the data. With that in mind, he stopped himself from pacing, closed himself in his small room and sat at the small desk. He steepled his fingers in front of his chin, elbows braced upon the top of the workspace and willed himself to think.

Scars were scars. All warriors had them, be they large or small. They were stories. Lessons. Warnings to potential enemies and maps to possible weaknesses to be exploited.

And he had known Vanto had them. Un’hee had told him what happened, how he and Vah’nya had been captives of the Grysk. He had seen Vah’nya’s scars. She had told him that Vanto saved her from the worst of it.

But yet, when faced with them - some, not all, it was apparent there were more hidden from view - Thrawn’s rational mind had seized. It was as though logic could not reconcile the young, bright-eyed Ensign Vanto he’d known since their time at Royal Imperial with this man, the stony faced Captain Ivant who showed only glimpses of his former self. The torture he must have endured to have such wicked lines carved into his skin, deep, jagged lines that looked plotted out to target vital organs, was unthinkable. All of them seemed insignificant compared to the ugly, marbled scarring on his left side. Thrawn had only been able to see part of it, for the evidence of his injury wrapped around to the Captain’s front, creeping up like a deadly flower, likely toward the heart. That looked like an injury caused by a greater weapon or an explosive of some kind. The overall wound was littered with smaller, deeper marks indicative of shrapnel.

It was a vicious thing. Cold, heartless and calculating, indicative of Grysk tactics. But it was not the only sort of torture the Grysk employed. In fact, it was a less common tactic. The Grysk had a tendency to mentally wound their captives. In cases like Un’hee, who had spent years in their captivity, it could lead to mental health issues, like the occasional panic attacks she suffered. Lesser Navigators, Chiss, and a myriad of other sentient species had lost their sanity altogether, or been manipulated into assisting their captors as if it were of their own free will.

Vah’nya’s wounds indicated that the Grysk had wanted information of some kind from her and that she had not bowed to them. Had they turned to Vanto? Had he been used against her? Or had his honor and duty demanded that he place himself as her shield? That is what his people would have demanded. Thrawn did not doubt for a moment that Vanto would die willingly for a Navigator of the Chiss Ascendancy.

The Grysk were intelligent enough to torture him and use that physical damage to weigh upon Vah’nya’s mental state. Whatever she had been hiding must have been of the utmost importance for Vanto to be tortured in such a way when it became clear that pain would not break the Navigator herself. Humans were not a superior race to the Chiss in terms of pain tolerance. It would be easier to break her impressionable heart by exploiting a beloved comrade.

But why? What was so important? What had the Grysk wanted? The obvious goal, of course was to demolish the Chiss, to take over their worlds and enslave them in body and mind, then dispose of them when they’d been stripped for all their worth.

It was Un’hee’s words that he recalled with a sudden, striking clarity. Vah’nya had not been meant to go on the mission that led to their capture. That was the missing piece. There was a reason in this detail, he need only find it.

The outer door to the suite slid open with a muffled, metallic hiss. Bridger’s footfalls were near silent but audible across the tiled floor. He paused eight strides in, and faced Thrawn’s door, waiting. He did not knock.

“I know you heard me come in,” The Jedi said. His voice held something tense and coiled.

“I did,” Thrawn said loudly enough to be heard through the closed door. He rose and toggled the release to open the door to his quarters, returning to his desk chair as Ezra followed him into the space.

“You need to talk to I- Vanto. Eli. Whatever you call him.”

“Bridger-”

“No. Hear me out.” Ezra perched himself at the foot of Thrawn’s pristinely made bunk, never once breaking eye contact. “I was speaking to Vah’nya and Un’hee. About what you saw.”

The narrowed gaze from Thrawn was harrowing. Even still, Ezra did not lose his nerve. “And what did the three of you deduce from such a thing?”

“I don’t know what they took from it other than that you felt bad,” Ezra admitted. “But I got something out of them.”

At that, Thrawn stiffened, curiosity piqued. “And what did you get from them?”

“Two things, technically.” Ezra placed his palms flat on his thighs, just above his knees. “One: This Navigator program didn’t exist until after Ivant and Vah’nya escaped from the Grysk.”

“That is common knowledge. This project is a development program designed to better prepare Navigators for their assignments, and strengthen their skills. The development of a new program is paramount at certain intervals to assure success.”

“Okay, fine.” Ezra shoved Thrawn’s unwillingness to consider that something was awry about this to the side. He’d meditate on it later. “Second, I found out part of why they were on the mission that got them captured.” At this, Ezra looked a bit hesitant.

Thrawn inclined his head, a benign gesture that welcomed him to continue.

“It had something to do with you.”

[commanderfoxy]

HELLO HI HELLO i just saw your post that you finished chaos rising :-) what did you think!??! (lilac-vode's main if you couldn't tell)

Hello! Hi!!!! LMAO yes! tHAt post oops. Brain said QUICK! make a silly joke post so no one will know how sad you are about Star War book :c

But THANK you for asking me my thoughts! <3 that is my favorite thing to be asked! I might put this under a read more because I am.... very chatty! Sorry if it's too much ahaha

I really enjoyed it!!! Like... my brain wants to compare it to Treason and Alliances, but they feel too different? This one is probably my second favorite of all of them? (First place goes to the first "Thrawn" novel. You just... can’t beat Eli being present for all of it. Hmmmm..... Them <3 )

Chaos Rising tho... okay I think this will probably be true of Greater Good when I read it as well? But I feel like these books do the thing that all my favorite Star Wars stories do where I KNOW things are going to end in a metaphorical train crash because of everything I know about the franchise/canon that already exists. But the whole time I'm reading/watching, there's still part of me that's hoping the train won't crash?

That feeling of foreboding! Like sure I know Thrawn ends up in the highest ranks of one of the most powerful, terrifying, evil forces in the galaxy, actively fighting against the good guys. but I'm still reading like "Hmmm... what if... he will... make better choices??? perhaps this won't end in misery." It’s basically me just constantly setting myself up for disappointment watching this man fall. He is a troubling character ;-;

And the Ascendancy series is especially good about giving Thrawn fun new characters to inevitably let down so.... yeah :( I also finished this book around the same time I stumbled across the logline leak for the Ahsoka series? So I'm DEEPLY worried about the future.

ALSO: Ar’alani: I adore you!!!!!!! Ma’am!!!!

Also Also: Wutroow my BELOVED I miss Hammerly but I will accept Wutroow as replacement for Short Queen with limited dialogue but who may possess my entire heart ❤️

(I am sorry it took me so long to answer this I couldn’t figure out how to do a Read More on my phone and I didn’t want to inflict this upon anyone who didn’t want to read it RIP)