Note: I wanted to write a story where the teen protagonist is actually being a teen (but also as an exceptional fighter and weapons expert, because Star Wars Rebels). Who has serious issues. Also, a story in which the fit people actually have to work out, because that's only fair. Lastly, the title is not just for fun; the physics of glitter are very important to the plot, okay.
The Physics of Glitter 1/3
So this is Lothal.
Kind of a dump, really. Nothing like Mandalore. Certainly nothing like Mandalore used to be in the Great Age, before the civil war. Sabine would bet that Lothal never even had a Great Age. Old Republic, Clone Wars, Galactic Empire, whatever-comes-next: Just one never-ending Dump Age for Lothal.
Hot dump, though.
Removing her armour, Sabine feels an absurd mix of relieved and exposed, even in the privacy of her own cabin. But it has been twelve months spent mostly in space – twelve disastrous months, or to be fair, eleven brilliant months, and one really disastrous month. After that much time in the climate-controlled, slightly chilled environment of spaceships, she longs to feel the warmth of a sun, any sun, on her skin. Wind in her face rather than recycled air out of a ventilation vent, a blue sky overhead rather than artificial light from a panel. That sort of thing. Lothal will do.
There's another thing. The armour is now the only possession she has left from her past, and seeing it from the outside as it hangs down from the hook on the wall, she feels like leaving herself behind, still and vulnerable. And with people she's only known for a month, at that.
Like most things, it's not only scary. Having nothing, owning nothing, it's like a reset.
The tank top and shorts she's wearing are hand-me-downs from Hera. Similarly, her hair's current shade of bright turquoise is the result of a chemical reaction involving leftover Anti-Freeze, which provided the colour, and the mineral salt solution Hera uses to clean the contacts in the sublight calibration system, which provided the permanence. Even the mini blaster she's now tucking into the back of her shorts isn't her own. It has been liberated from behind the backrest of the co-pilot's seat, Kanan's favourite lounging spot.
Next to Hera.
Meaning?
She decides not to think about this now, and rushes out; not in the measured, relaxed pace she'd pictured – like an adult, but a cool adult – but in a skippity-hoppity, rattling-into-doors, actually-looking-forward-to-this, tumble.
Of course, they're outside, Kanan and Hera, unloading crates of supplies that contain fuel, pressed meal bars, barrels of fresh water (good, she'll need a shower later). Overhead, Zeb is on the lookout for trouble. Chopper is repairing a small defect on the backboard hyperdrive motivator – the same defect that made them divert for Corellia, where they found Sabine in a debris field behind the moon. She owes that defect her life.
For a second, she just watches Kanan and Hera from the airlock. They're not even speaking, but of course the unloading goes seamlessly. Kanan is still putting away a toolbox while Hera throws him a new, sealed medpack – they'd used up the old one, on Sabine. He is not even looking, but turns around and catches the medpack anyway. Does he have eyes in the back of his head?
A memory comes up without asking: Unloading supplies with Ketsu had been a different affair. Always talking, shouting, bad-mouthing whichever insignificant moon they'd found themselves on this time. It would have taken all day, and while Ketsu would have probably thrown things at her when she'd had her back turned, too, Sabine definitely, definitely would have dropped that medpack. But there'd have been more laughter, too.
She probably shouldn't be staring at Hera and Kanan, but damn it, it's been a month and she still hasn't figured it out. Are these two an item or not?
Here's one piece of evidence: Only last night, on a trip from her cabin to the 'fresher, she'd run into Kanan in the hall. The only two places he could have come from were a) the machine room (at three in the morning? Mid-flight, with all systems green, and the hyperdrive humming smoothly?) or b) Hera's cabin (which, again, begs the question: at three in the morning? Had Hera thrown him out? Does he snore?). He'd merely said, 'Good morning," without a hint of surprise at Sabine's presence in the hall. But then, what had she expected, a wink? Not from Mr Sabaccface.
Too late, she realises Mr Sabaccface is looking up at her. As always, he gives off the impression he's already figured out everything there is to know about her. We'll, he's in for a few surprises.
"Where are you going?" he says.
"Out," she says, a tad more aggressively than intended. But the, what is it to him? She can go where she wants, she thinks, leaping down the ramp. Daring him to snap back.
He shrugs. "Have fun."
"…'kay," she answers, a bit deflated, heading towards the exit of the landing pit. She doesn't even know why she feels so irritated all of a sudden. High time she got rid of some of that energy.
Her glorious getaway is ruined when she doesn't immediately remember the keycode. Just out, Sabine! Out! No staring at the doorlock, muttering curses!
"Hey, Sabine?" Kanan calls after her.
She turns. Tries to appear unfazed. "Yeah?"
Both Kanan and Hera looking at her now. Great. "I think we've got this between the two of us," Kanan says, meaning himself and Hera. "So how about you take Zeb along?"
"Think I can't handle myself?" she shoots back.
"Of course you can," says Kanan in his most reassuring tone, and doesn't it sound a little patronising, too. "But we think Zeb could do with the exercise."
"Hey!" interjects the Lasat from somewhere up above.
Oh god, Sabine realises belatedly. Did they want privacy? Not on her watch, she thinks with a certain amount of cattiness.
And anyway, how does he know? How does Kanan always know what she's up to?
She smirks, for once exerts full control over her face. "Why don't you ask me to take the droid while you're at it?" she asks. "At least Chopper has a jetpack."
"Missy, you'll need a jetpack if you don't watch it!" roars Zeb.
"You've got to catch me first," she shouts back. Oh, she likes him. At least Zeb treats her like an equal. Like an equal enemy, granted, but they're getting there.
In the glory of that exchange, she finally remembers the keycode.
Kanan shrugs. "Suit yourself," he says. "At least you found my spare blaster. Very responsible, taking a blaster."
Head held high, Sabine walks through the exit. From somewhere deep in her mind, the impulse to slam the door emerges. But the door isn't made for that, she has to wait for it to close automatically. Then she breathes out. All in all, the conversation is not a total loss, she decides – points awarded for the banter with Zeb, points deducted for potentially sounding like an obnoxious teen.
Finally on the road, she picks a side at random, dashes off, or tries to. Sabine is almost fifteen minutes into her run before her brain finally stops going around in circles, replaying the short conversation from earlier, thinking up a thousand rebuttals, all while dodging pedestrians, running tangents around market stalls, and giving any Stormtrooper postings a wide berth. Finally she leaves the outskirts of the city, right into the dry, rocky plains. It's mid-afternoon now and already the shadows are growing longer, but on the horizon, over the mountains, the air still shimmers with heat. After the bustling city, the view is quite peaceful, especially for a dump like this.
Gradually, the mental hamster wheel stops as the terrain gets rougher. She likes it. Jumping from rock to rock on the uneven ground, she feels the strength returning to her legs, her feet, all those countless muscles stabilising her body. She is going to be so sore tomorrow, and her skin is already sticky with sweat and dust.
Oh yeah.
One thought at a time, finally. How had Kanan known she was going for a run? They'd been on the Ghost. No place for running, and she hadn't really talked about her hobbies. Or anything else. Maybe it had been simple deduction: Agility and strength like hers didn't just happen, they had to be worked for, and she was used to working hard for it.
But during her short time on the Ghost, it had hardly been a habit. At first, she'd still been in convalescence, but even after, there was just so much jumping up and down a stack of crates and doing pullups on her bunk – on her own, without Ketsu pushing her – that she could do before being bored to tears. Plus, she'd hardly seen the point: Being fit hadn't saved her last time, after all. So she'd let it slide, and boy was she paying the price right now.
But all that meant Kanan must have really paid attention to her. She doesn't know how to feel about that.
Now, her whole body is at work as she leaps down a short but steep incline, jumping from jagged rock to jagged rock. No time for thinking, she lets her reflexes decide where to land her feet. After all, good reflexes don't come out of nowhere. No time to think about what'll happen if she face-plants, breaks a leg or her skull.
At the foot of the hillside, she stands still for a minute, wipes the sweat out of her eyes, and the hair currently plastered to her forehead out of her face. She doesn't usually rest on a run, but today she is already close to wiped out, and only half-way. She's out of breath, her heart is pumping hard, her hands are swollen with heat. Feeling on top of the world.
At the academy, there had been no time for any of this. They'd had focused, intense workout sessions designed to train their coordination, close-combat skills, and willingness to suffer, but the bulk of their physical fitness training had been via myoelectrical and cardiovascular stimulation. Maximum efficiency, because someone had realised they could train and watch training videos at the same time – sublight navigation algorithms, or crowd control techniques. Sabine remembers learning everything there was to know about exothermic reactions while drenched in sweat, her heart drumming in her ears. The Empire did not waste time.
The sun is already low, sure sign that Sabine is jolly well succeeding in wasting time today. Sticking it to the Empire, one long run at a time.
Suddenly, a different thought occurs in her dehydrated brain. Should she have offered her help, back at the Ghost? It had hardly seemed necessary, with Hera and Kanan being such a well-rehearsed team, and they'd said they'd got this, and anyway, Zeb hadn't helped, either, he'd just been sitting on top of the Ghost with a rifle. And if they had needed help, they could have just asked.
And Sabine isn't even a member of the crew, not really. Sure, they'd picked her up and patched her up, and called her Spectre Five during a tense situation when they had navigated orbit over Lothal, but that had been for anonymity.
Spectre Five. Even the droid comes before her!
She'd just hitched a ride, that's what this is. She'll repay it as soon as she gets some sort of income, and she's got a wide array of marketable skills. Looking at this dump, she'd probably have to hitch another ride, just to get off Lothal and into slightly more relevant regions of the galaxy, where her talents will shine. Where she will be trusted.
Trusted. She sighs.
Like Ketsu should have trusted her. Like Sabine shouldn't have trusted Ketsu.
It's the asymmetry of the whole thing that makes this so hard to bear. She could have stayed on top of it, had she not been so naive, so childish. She'd believed in what they had, and she'd believed too much. The thought has been on a slow burn for a month, and it's still ongoing. Maybe one day she'll stop feeling pathetic. Maybe not. Maybe not feeling anything would be a good start.
Sabine throws a rock high up in the air and blasts it into smithereens, but unsurprisingly, it doesn't make her feel better. So she climbs back up the hillside and runs back, kicking up her pace just a notch on the plains, towards where the spaceport looms on the horizon, fleeing the creeping shadows from the mountains and her own jumbled thoughts.
Her legs are shaking when she reaches the landing pit. A rational voice inside her points out that a mere four weeks ago she'd been twirling her thumbs in a bacta tank, and she's allowed to be fatigued. But welcome to real life, she thinks, where being out of shape will get you killed. Thankfully, her brain supplies the keycode instantly. That same treacherous brain points out that this is because she's not being watched by the Spectres.
Sabine expects some light mockery, deservedly so; she probably looks as if the run has completely destroyed her. Instead there is no-one. The Ghost is locked up, though her code still gets her inside.
But why is she disappointed now? Hadn't the entire objective of the last two hours been to get away from everyone? It's because they could have mentioned they were going out, but didn't, she thinks. If she cared, she'd probably be offended. She all but crawls inside on unstable legs, intent on locating a glass of water, a meal bar, and the refresher, in that order.
What she sees in the common room unsettles her slightly. On the table is a bottle that proclaims to contain Meiloorun Iced Tea – Best Outer Rim Tasty Refreshing Fruit Beverage, drops of condensation beading on its cool exterior, and a glowing datapad with the words:
Sabine,
We hope you had a good run! Now, put down that protein bar and join us when you're ready, we're having dinner at the Loth Star Canteen. Best fried dumplings in downtown Capital City, according to Zeb. It's just off High Street - ask the locals!
xxx
Hera
PS: Sorry for exploding your comlink. We did eventually figure out you'd left it here.
Maybe it's the exhaustion from her run. Or, more likely, maybe it's the whole last month of pain, and regret, and mourning the first and best friendship she'd ever had. Who knows where it comes from, but a wave of conflicting emotions overcomes Sabine. She just stands there.
They're so nice! It would be so easy to just go along with this, to fade out all the conflict she already senses. Be part of this group, where they have group dinners at the local pub and leave each other bottles of iced tea (it kills her that someone actually went out and bought it for her, just because they thought she might like it after her run). This thing they have feels more like a family every day. Up to and including the thing with the comlink – she knows she should have probably taken it with her, but did Hera have to point it out like this?
So why don't they trust her? Why can't she be truly, fully, a part of this?
On the other hand: Why would she? She's known them for a month, most of which she'd spent hiding in their spare cabin. To trust her, they'd have to read her mind.
She's so, so tempted to go. But she needs to be careful this time if she wants to avoid another disaster of Ketsu-like proportions. Sabine knows what she wants things to be, but she's not anywhere close to figuring out what's actually going on – with this group, and with herself. She'll need a lot more peace and quiet on her own.
Composing her reply takes a full twenty minutes, while her stomach grumbles and her sweat dries, leaving behind salty crusts on her face and arms.
Hera,
Thanks for the invite! I'm pretty beat, though, will have to call an early night. Next time, OK?
–Sabine
All right, so it's not a masterpiece of eloquence and she probably comes across as a bit of a spoilsport. But maybe they'll be relieved, she thinks, as she sends off the message to Hera's comlink. They are such a close team already, why would they even want her there?
She grabs a meal bar, chows down on it while draining the Meiloorun Tasty Refreshing Fruit Beverage, and then hops into the refresher to bang her head against the wall for a bit.
When she comes out, the comlink blinks. She's going to ignore it, she's going to –
Kanan says to tell you he'll buy you a Jogan foam cider when you get here, apparently it's a "fun fair in a glass". No, I don't know what he means, or why a grown man would drink anything so alarmingly purple. –Hera
She has barely finished reading it when the next message comes in with a beep.
Nevermind. I tasted it. He's right. –Hera
Sabine sighs inwardly. It does sound like they're having fun.
Beep. Of course I am right. –Kanan
That does it. All right, all right, I'm coming, she writes back, and the answer hardly takes a second.
It merely says, Hooray!
To be continued.
