𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓
𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐲: ezra just can't figure out why you hate him so much.
𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠: ghost crew x f!reader
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 3.7k
𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭: requested, mentioned enslavement, reader is kinda mean, no use of Y/N
Now, Ezra wasn’t one to jump to conclusions, but what other conclusion was there?
You had to hate his guts. You refused to look at him and you wouldn’t talk to him, not to mention the glare you weren’t at all trying to hide. Sabine told him to not worry about it, that you would open up on your own time. Somehow, Ezra doubted that.
Hera told him something similar about giving you time, and he understood why; it’d only been a week since your grand and harrowing rescue from the clutches of the Hutts (the crew had yet to tell him why you needed rescuing in the first place).
A few months into joining the crew, it became clear that someone was missing. Sabine’s room held the belongings of another, another person’s blanket and pillow situated on the bottom bunk. An utterance of a stranger’s name was sometimes whispered, accompanied by shadowed looks and a tense silence.
When he got up the nerve to ask, Hera had pursed her lips and crossed her arms. “There’s a reason you’re Spectre 7, not 6. Six is… somewhere.”
“How do we find them?”
Hera hadn’t given an answer, simply letting out a sigh and turning to go back to her tasks.
So the mystery of Spectre 6 lived on, remnants of this girl coming to him in pieces. Little jokes here and there about how Six would yell about this or how she would laugh at that. Ezra started to piece together an image of this girl in his head, imagining a smiling figure with fuzzy features, doing flips and handstands across his mind.
“If only Six was here,” Zeb commented into his comlink as he and Ezra balanced across a skinny support beam. “Little acrobat would come in handy.”
Kanan and Sabine stayed up at odd hours of the night when they weren’t aware Ezra was watching from around the corner, mumbling to themselves as they scoured databases for clues as to where the lost Spectre had gone.
“Bingo,” Sabine grinned, frantically tapping Kanan’s arm. “The mercenaries that took her are from Corellia.”
Kanan set a hand on her shoulder. Hope flashed in his eyes. “Good work. We’ll get her back soon.”
Whoever she was, she sure meant a lot to the crew. So much so that he started to grow bitter at whatever had taken her away—Ezra started to want her back just as much as the rest of them.
And so naturally, when Vizago crawled out whatever hole he dwelled in to drop off a message from the Hutts, Ezra was a rapt listener—it went something along the lines of, “Take back your sewer rat… for five thousand Imperial credits.”
“We don’t have that money,” said Sabine, her voice a new dangerous low. Her eyes lasered in on the table before her as a sense of fury rose within the common.
Zeb scoffed, his fists curling. “Why weren’t the Hutts out first guess? Of course they wanted her back.”
“Why?” Ezra asked without thinking.
While Zeb’s eyes flashed darkly, Kana answered offhandedly, “Back before we found her, she worked for them—the Hutts—she was their prize weapon.”
“We got her out,” Hera said softly. “But a few weeks before you got here… she went out on a solo mission.” She hugged herself. “I shouldn’t have let her go.”
“She would’ve gone whether you let her or not,” Sabine quipped. “That’s how she is.”
Ezra stepped forward and set his hands on the table everyone gathered around, his eyes raising to assess his friends. “Let’s stop talking about it and make a plan. She can’t be safe there.”
The rescue mission itself was near flawless; Kanan and Hera went forward with a crate “full of credits.” Plot twist: there were no credits. Coming in behind them, Sabine and Chopper infiltrated the lower kitchens of the Hutts’ headquarters, taking out a few droids and taking one prisoner. With a few gentle threats, Sabine sent word to Zeb and Ezra exactly where Spectre 6 was being held.
That was where the plan went awry; while Zeb was held back by a wary yet naive droid, Ezra slipped past unnoticed, casting Zeb a wave as he dove around a corner and headed deeper into the fortress.
Finding the cell wasn’t much of a problem, nor was getting the door open—the problem at hand was getting you out of the cell.
You were curled into a shadowed corner like some kind of alley cat, eyes lifting to gaze upon him with nothing but contempt. From the moment he saw you, he had the sense you disliked his very being.
Somehow—he still wonders how—he managed to convince you he was with the Ghost crew, luring you out of the cell and leading you to where the others had started up a racket after getting caught with no payment. The final escape was slim, and your hair was singed from a too-close blaster fire.
Ezra noticed, eyes wide as he moved to swat at the slowly rising smoke. “Are you okay?”
You swatted him away, glare ready and waiting. “Fine.” And you disappeared, rushing deep into the ship with a frazzled Hera on your tail.
His every attempt at communication after was met with backlash. You really did seem like a cat in his mind, all hissy and skittish.
“Be patient,” is what everyone told him, but really, it was getting out of hand. After three months of your return, you had yet to drop your hatred, and it was starting to interfere in missions.
Just last week he’d been about to make a shot that would have saved time concerning a quick escape when you completely ignored his presence and tripped him.
“Sorry,” you’d said, not sounding very sorry at all.
That wasn’t the end of it either.
“Do you need something?”
“Go be useful, if you can.”
“Could you be more amazingly purposeless here?”
Ezra had to give it to you, you certainly had a knack for tearing down a guy’s self-esteem. Each insult seemed to roll off your tongue so easily that Ezra came to correlate your voice with a bad day.
You could not possibly have made Ezra feel more unwelcome, despite everyone’s assurances that you’d warm up eventually. Ezra started to question the crew’s definition of eventually. He really hoped you would start to like him soon, because you were quite possibly one fo the coolest people he’d ever seen.
When you weren’t actively making his life difficult, you were training day in and day out, practicing acrobatics atop the Ghost. Not to mention, if he and Kanan didn’t have some sixth sense thanks to the Force, your movements would be deadly silent. You moved like a specter, like your feet never even touched the ground.
Today was like most days in accordance with you; you ignored his existence save for the occasional backlash whenever he stepped into your vicinity, and Ezra was left to wonder after the dark and nearly forlorn look constantly trapped in your eyes (he always tried to despise you, like he could easily despise Zeb at times, but there was something in how lost you looked that stopped him).
Though, today was different. Every once in a while you took to the habit of taking his beloved helmet for reasons only the stars could know. On these days he could scour the Ghost to find you lazing about like a cat, donning his helmet as you stared at the expanse of sky from the gunner.
So he immediately set out for the gunner of the ship, already preparing his quippy remark, only to falter when you were nowhere in sight. Ezra squinted at the vacant seat, zeroing in on the dual beskar knives safely in their sheathes. Beskar, he awed for the umpteenth time. He’d asked after them too many times to count, only receiving one answer from Sabine: “We used to have similar lines of work. She was very skilled at hers. That came with perks.”
And the mystery of you expanded, as it always did.
“Hey.” Ezra looked into the dimness of your and Sabine’s room, finding the latter at her desk fiddling with her recently damaged blaster. “You seen Six?”
“Why?” She sighed as her blaster sparked up again. “You gonna start problems?”
“Okay, one, I never start anything with her. Two, I just want my helmet back.”
Sabine threw her blaster down, frustrated. “Haven’t seen her today. You checked the gunner?”
“Three times, just in case she was hiding.” That got a laugh from Sabine, who shifted to stand and stretch.
“Then I dunno how to help you, kid. She’s gotta be somewhere.”
That would have been fine advice, if for the rest of the day Ezra didn’t continue searching the recesses of the ship, his intent slowly shifting from demanding back his helmet to just making sure you’re still alive.
Ezra burst into the common room around the time the whole crew was gathering to grab something to eat at the end of the day, his hands planted on either side of the door as he said with a sudden urgency. “Has anyone seen Six?”
Sabine had the nerve to roll her eyes. “Again with the helmet? She’ll give it back—”
“Has anyone seen her?” Ezra cut in to demand once more, scanning his eyes across the room. “Think.”
Only a moment passed before the others started to furrow their brows and shift around. Hera glanced up at Ezra. “Not since this morning.”
A murmur of agreement ran through the crew. No one had seen her all day, neither had they heard her voice from across the ship, shouting about something or other that someone had done wrong.
Thus, the manhunt began, but even when everyone was shouting your name throughout the ship, there was no response. Lothal’s moons had already risen about halfway into the sky. Creatures started to come out at this hour, varying from the wild things to troopers.
You were out on the Lothal plains after dark, without your knives, and Ezra suddenly forgot every wrong you’d done against him. You were a pain in his ass, but if you were gone, he wasn’t sure what he’d do.
Setting out was the easy part, Hera and Chopper staying behind to watch the Ghost whilst the others rushed into the night, armed with their weapon of choice. Ezra took one of the stolen speeders stowed away in the hold, swinging a leg over and taking off across the plains as Sabine took the second speeder in the other direction.
Ezra tried to ignore the wind hitting his face and focused solely on the hum of the speeder, the sway of the tall grasses, and the sudden and faint flutter of a heartbeat somewhere in the distance. Over the course of his training with Kanan, Ezra took to secretly memorizing the sound of your spirit, not wanting to be on the receiving end of your notorious sneak attacks.
Practically shutting off everything other sense, he leaned to the right, following the ringing of your heart and soul deeper into the plains. The grasses grew taller here, unhindered by farming, and rocks stretched high into the sky, forming a sort of labyrinth between them. He weaved the speeder in and out of several stone mountains, sensing the ring growing closer.
The ground elevated into a slope as the rocks fell away to reveal dusty ground, and Ezra took a left at the very last large mountain. It opened up to a bluff overlooking the East. Ezra slowed the speeder to a light rev, the ringing now a strong buzz, and your heart a steady beat in his head.
You were here, that was for sure.
Cutting the ignition, Ezra stepped off the speeder and sauntered forward, eyes scanning the area. Just when the buzz and ring of the force grew too much, Ezra caught a movement ahead of him, and the sounds all fell away. A figure was sprawled out on the grass, shifting every few seconds like they couldn’t get comfortable.
Then the figure sighed, and Ezra confirmed it was you (he’d heard that agitated sound enough times to know it as yours).
Ezra should have learned by now to proceed with extreme caution, but he had always been a stubborn learner, so he trudged through the grass uncaring of the crunching underfoot. You lurched upward like a frightened animal, eyes locked on him in her instant. Ezra instantly drew a mental image of a loth cat, hackles risen and fangs bared. The likeness was uncanny.
“What’re you doing here?” You sat back slowly, examining him carefully.
He nearly scoffed. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
Blinking blankly, you turned and plopped down on the grass, facing the plains. He stood for an awkward few moments before you snapped, “I’m fine. You can go.”
“Yeah, right.” He plopped down in the dirt beside you, a generous berth between you. “You scared the kark out of everyone.”
Your answer was instantaneous. “Why?”
Ezra paused, thought some, looked at you, and spat the awkward words out. “We care about you.”
You waited for the blow, the butt of the joke, but it never came, and you were left awkwardly staring at his profile. “Oh.”
“Is that a surprise?” he wondered.
“No,” you shook your head. “Not for the others…”
Ezra rolled his eyes and leaned back on his hands, unable to take it any longer. “Can I ask you something? Why do you hate me so much?”
You blinked as if the question shocked you, and wasn’t at all valid. “What? I don’t hate you.”
“Coulda fooled me,” he scoffed. You huffed and turned away, crossing your arms over your knees.
“Well, I don’t. You’re just…”
“Just what?”
Pursing your lips, your eyes darted back to meet his, brows furrowed. “Annoying.”
Ezra met your gaze back with a mirrored intensity. “And you’re rude.”
“I wouldn’t be if you’d leave me alone.”
“We’re on this crew together!” he snapped. “I physically cannot ignore you. So, if you could get over whatever grudge you have against me, that’d be great!”
“Don’t—” You got a grip on your emotions, averting your attention to the sky. In a softer tone, you warned, “Don’t yell at me.”
Taken aback, Ezra gave you an odd look, shifting to catch your eye. You just shifted further away from him, grunting something under your breath. You’d always been so haunted and withdrawn. No one would ever tell him why.
It couldn’t hurt to ask.
“Are you…” He hesitated, waiting till you cast him a glance. “Are you okay? Why were you with the Hutts? And what does it have to do with bounty hunters? Why—”
You sneered as your hand clamped down on his mouth, nearly knocking him backward. Holding his eyes in a glare, you huffed. “Just shut up, okay? You ask too many questions.” You plopped back down and retracted your hand. “Annoying, like I said.”
“I want to help you.”
“Did I ask?”
The silence was thick, broken only by the chirping of bugs in the tall stalks all around. You ran a hand over your face, almost trying to hide, before sighing and glaring at the sky. “Whatever… I used to be something of a bounty hunter. A weapon, more like.”
Ezra felt like that should have been obvious, and did his best to hold back his questions as you shifted uncomfortably. “Some bad people with the Guild found me as a kid, when I was just some nobody doing acrobat tricks for money. They thought I had potential, so they just… took me. Didn’t really matter. It was better than the streets, I guess.”
Tugging at your hair, you gave a little shrug. “They taught me a lot about killing and stealing and what-not. Long story short, I was sold to the Hutts like this shiny new assassin toy.” You pumped a fist. “Yay.”
He felt a little bad for grinning, sniffing as he nodded. “Then what? You got here somehow.”
“I’m getting there,” you gritted. You tried to look pissed, but couldn’t hold back a slight grin. “Sabine found me, like, a year before they found you. She was on a mission, and I tried to pick-pocket her. She chased me a mile around the city before she caught me. A shorter story short, the crew helped me escape the Hutts, and the rest is history.”
One thing still didn’t add up. “How’d the Hutts get you back?”
“Oh, uhm… they caught me.” There is was again; haunted, a shadow crossing your eyes as memories played up in your head. “I, uh, didn’t think the crew would come after me, to be honest. I kinda resigned myself to a life trapped on Tatooine.”
You caught his eye. “Then you showed up and broke me out.”
“Was that such a surprise?”
“Maybe. I mean,” you murmured whilst playing with the grass. “It didn’t take too long for them to replace me, did it?”
And suddenly, it all fell perfectly into place. All the hatred and coldness, the malice and contempt… you thought they’d replaced you. Really? Ezra coudln’t stop the laugh bubbling out of his chest, not even when you shot him a deathly glower.
“What’s so funny?”
“You just—What?” Ezra shifted ot his knees, beaming down at you as he shook his head. “They never replaced you. All I ever heard when I joined was about this mysterious crewmate they’d lost.” He flicked your forehead. “If they replaced you, then why’re you still Spectre 6 and I’m Spectre 7?”
You started to snap back only to stop short, gaping like a fish as you grasped for some kind of defense. You couldn’t find one, apparently, and promptly snapped your mouth shut.
“I never thought of that,” you muttered at last.
No duh. Ezra barely held back a roll of his eyes. “Think about it then.”
You did (he could tell form your thoughtful sneer) and you slowly raised your gaze to look at him again. The haunting was still there, but your eyes were softer than they’d ever been when laid upon him. “I’m… sorry.” The way your face scrunched up amde it seem like ti was painful to say, your monotone going on, “The way I’ve treated you hasn’t been fair.”
“Thanks,” he said with a gentle nod, and an awkwardness settled around the pair of you. “So… wanna head back?”
Instantly you shook you head, returning your attention to the sky. “Not yet. Wanna watch the stars.”
He noticed your lack of jacket just as he shivered. “You’ve gotta be cold.”
“Eh,” you shrugged. “I’m fine. You can head back if you want.”
Ezra didn’t move an inch. All he could think wa sthat maybe, he was finally going to get to know the Six the crew knew. The one who laughed freely and pulled tricks. The one that played hide and seek with Kanan and was always so frustrated when he cheated and used to force to find you.
So he stayed right where he was, lazing back on the grass to have a better view of the sky. “Nah. I’ll stay.”
You cast him a short glance as you laid back as well. “Okay…”
Only an hour later, when you’d fallen asleep and punched Ezra when he tried to wake you (“I’m sorry!” “Yeah, yeah.”), did you and Ezra head back to the Ghost. You kept falling asleep on him, forcing him to use one hand to steer the speeder and the other to keep you hands around his middle.
Relief coursed through him when he caught sight of the ship, warm light flowing from the open hatch, a few silhouetted figures pacing back and forth. He pulled the speeder to a stop and leg you go, sighing even as you slid off and hit the ground with a thud.
Probably not the best choice, especially not when Hera bolted from where she sat and rushed to your side. “What happened? It she all right?” She glared up from the ground. “Ezra!”
He raised his hands in surrender, trying to defend himself, when you groaned and blinked blearily around. “Why am I on the ground…?”
Hera gripped your shoulder and held your face in her palm, startling you. “Are you okay?”
You nodded hesitantly and tried not to seem too content with the soft touches. “Yeah? I was just asleep.”
Harsh footsteps echoed form the ship and out stomped Zeb moments later, rough around the edges per usual. “Where’ve you been!?”
“Uhm, out?” you replied, brows vaulted as Sabine rushed out beyond him. The whole crew stood around, all looking a mix of relieved and pissed. “I was just up on the bluffs…”
Hera let out a sigh and allowed you to sit up on your own. “And that’s fine, but you should tell someone before you disappear all afternoon.”
“I didn’t think it mattered that much.” You shifted around and stood to your feet, crossing your arms over your chest.
No one really said anything, only exchanged odd glances, until Hera blinked quickly and set a hand on your shoulder. “You look cold. Come on.”
She made to guide you inside when you suddenly stopped, turned to Ezra, and grinned tightly. “You’re… not so bad.”
And with that, Hera dragged you into the warmth fo the Ghost, leaving behind you a fairly confused crew. All eyes fell to Ezra as he smirked and gave a simple shrug. Sabine offered up a smile of her own before she snapped and pointed at the boy. “Oh, you were looking for your helmet right?”
He’d completely forgotten. “Oh, yeah.”
She passed a hand over his hair, ruffling it up. “It’s under your desk, idiot.”
Ezra huffed, hiding the flush in his cheeks as he muttered under his breath, following after Zeb and Sabine as they headed inside the ship. The hatch rose up behind them and hissed shut just as Kanan came up beside Ezra, one brow raised.
“So you two are friends now?”
He rolled his eyes at that. “I think so? She’s very cryptic. But, I don’t think she hates me.”
Kanan laughed. “That’s a start, I suppose.”
Ezra had to agree.
And as time would pass, and your walls slowly tore down to reveal a human so bright and radiant, both you and Ezra nearly forgot all about the days you’d come close to murdering him.
