I know, I know. I should be updating WMBS, but I'm still waiting on feedback for a certain chapter. It's coming, I promise!
I came up with this fic idea while drawing a SWR comic for Tumblr, then proceeded to have a million Spacedad/Spacedaughter feelings. I went through a few plots for this, but I liked this one best so it stuck. Hope you enjoy it.
Adjusting to a new crew member was never the easiest thing to do, as Kanan had learnt over the past five years. When it was just him and Hera, it had been a matter of learning a whole new way of life with the Rebel cause, but he had very few people to concern himself with (I.E the one woman he didn't want to upset with his old scoundrel ways) until he got the hang of things as a crew member of the Ghost. Chopper was...an experience. One they were still having and he wished would end any day now.
Zeb had been a different challenge; still reeling from the extermination of his entire people, he had been seeking out any target he could vent and rage at, no matter the consequence. Even if those targets were Imperial agents. Kanan knew that anger all too well and tried relating to the Lasat his first night onboard.
Loudly announcing to the whole crew that he was a Jedi who had escaped the Purge had not been part of his plan (and neither had the talk with Hera afterwards in her bunk, but he didn't complain about that part).
It wasn't brought up again much afterwards, but Kanan knew that Zeb understood, even if they didn't trade stories or confide in each other like their captain had hoped. They all knew they were in a common place, and could escape their hells for a better cause.
Except for Chopper. He decided that he knew nothing at all, but would steal one half of Kanan's lightsaber whenever he could.
Sabine Wren, however, was a whole other level of 'adjusting'.
Hera had brought the kid onboard a few weeks ago after a supply run gone awry in the Mandalorian system (they had nothing to do with the Clones; they had no part in their production; they were not to blame…). Apparently, the girl had been chasing a bounty, got left for dead by a partner, and had been fighting her way out of Empire custody when Hera swooped in for the save. Kanan didn't get much else, but Wren was offered a safe space and she took it.
Now they had a fifteen year old girl holed up in her quarters most of the time and way too eager to take Chopper apart (only the captain objected). But if Hera trusted her, then so did he.
Teenagers were not an area of specialty for Kanan Jarrus, but he remembered being young and stuck out in the cold with no friends. He hadn't felt young back then, but he knew better than to think that life had aged him that early. His methods of coping - back then - however, were something Hera would never allow, so Kanan was now attempting social interaction with the girl who avoided it most.
He held his knuckle just above the bare metal of Sabine's door, mentally going through what Hera had told him earlier that morning: Get her comfortable, talk about anything that gets her interested, try not to scare her.
"You don't have to spare any details you don't want to," Hera had assured him. "But if she can open up, it'll be for the good of the crew. We need to be able to work together effortlessly, and we can't do that closed off."
Hera knew what she was doing, and she knew what was best for them all in the long run. Kanan kind of wished he wasn't doing this alone, but 'group therapy' with Zeb did not sound appealing at all. He was stuck like this.
'Here goes nothing, I guess…'
A loud bang from inside the room shook Kanan from his reserve and he quickly opened the door to rush in, only to half mid-step when an orange puddle seeped towards him, mixing with blue, purple and all sorts of other colours he'd never seen outside of the core worlds.
"What the…?"
"I-I'm sorry!" Sabine poked her head out from the top bunk, colours splashed all over her face and hair. She slipped out onto the floor, carefully avoiding the mess. "I just dropped some cans and t-the lids weren't-"
"Hey hey," Kanan stepped inside, reaching out to hold her shoulder. "It's not a big deal. This can be cleaned up."
Sabine pursed her lips, avoiding his eyes, but nodded anyway. Great, he'd scared her. This was going to end so well.
"What is this stuff anyway?" He asked, earning a raised eyebrow from the young girl. Stupid question, of course.
"Just paint. Nothing special." She answered, crossing her arms and rubbing them slowly. Kanan couldn't recall the Ghost having a stock of paint like this; any they had was for the Ghost's exterior. He glanced over the bunk beds and saw some pads; she must've gotten them herself.
"Do you know what to use to clean it…?" Sabine asked, tilting her head to look up at him with an apprehensive stare.
"Uh, no, probably not." He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. Art was another non-speciality of his, and something that she obviously liked. One discussion topic crossed off the list, then…
"I'll go grab it. Can you make sure Chopper doesn't make this worse, please?" At Kanan's nod, Sabine walked around him and headed down the corridor.
"They're in the galley!" He called out. Sabine made a turn and walked past the doorway again, making Kanan's mouth twitch upwards. He looked over the room again, seeing that the edges of the paint puddle were starting to dry up. Hopefully they could stop a stain from setting in, but it wasn't the end of the world if they couldn't.
His eyes drifted to the beds again, spotting spray cans littered around the latter along with a few dried paint sprays here and there. And some...burn marks? Was she setting the paint on fire? No, he was sure that the standard stuff was inflammable. Was it? He didn't know, but it should be.
Sabine returned a few minutes later with a bucket and damp rag cloths, dumping them with Kanan as she brushed her dark hair back behind her ears. He watched as she knelt down with a rag and started wiping away at the drying edges of the paint with a determined look in her eyes.
He put the bucket between them, along with the extra rags, and then knelt down as well. He felt her eyes on him but didn't meet them. Cleaning up was priority at the moment.
They stayed in the awkward silence until the worst of the paint had been wiped away, taking half of the cleansing fluid and all but one of the rags. Yet they were still faced with stains that refused to be scrubbed away.
Kanan rubbed his cold hands together, finally looking over to Sabine, who was trying to pick at the dried paint with her fingernails. He patted her shoulder and stood up, trying not to cringe when she flinched.
"Don't worry too much about that," He said gently, watching her shoulders slowly relax. He smiled in a way he hoped was reassuring and not creepy, and picked up the messy rags in the bucket. "Hera won't mind another patch on the ship."
"Really?" Sabine asked, slipping her gloves back on.
"Really. Just don't burn us out of the sky, okay?" He pointed to the scorch marks on the far side of the room, and Sabine winced.
"Sorry about that. I was… testing, something."
Kanan raised an eyebrow and nodded for her to elaborate. She smiled (a genuine smile; the first he'd seen from her) and stood up, picking up a spray can from the floor. She held it out, along with a detonator clipped to her belt.
"I came up with these after… the academy, doing bounty work. The Empire is so grey and drab, so I thought adding some colour to their palette would really stick it to them, y'know? It was just little grenades and bombs at first, simple stuff. But recently I've been working on explosive paint! Not just an explosive with paint in it, but paint that detonates itself at the push of a button!"
Kanan couldn't help but to smile as Sabine rambled on about her newest artistic endeavour. Her golden eyes went wide with excitement as she described the colourful explosions she had already created, and how she could make even bigger ones with nanites of her own creation. Her love of expression shone brilliantly, and he thought back to his own childhood; the one of Caleb Dume. The boy with a million questions and an itch for freedom in battle. In some ways, he survived in Sabine.
When Sabine took a moment to breath, Kanan jumped in. "Have you shown this to Hera?"
Sabine shifted on her feet and shrugged. "I'm just in the prototype stage at the moment. I wanted to surprise her with the real thing."
"Just not in her face." Kanan said, smirking. Sabine, still smiling, nodded.
"I'll do the testing outside next time."
"If you want to. Though," he headed towards the door, tilting his head to the splatters of paint still on the wall. "it's nice to see some more colour on these walls."
Sabine followed his gaze, no doubt ideas racing through her mind, as Kanan left the room to put the cleaning supplies away. He heard some shifting and faint mumbling before the doors closed automatically and he was too far away to pick up any details, but he didn't need the Force to know Sabine was much more relaxed than before.
0XX0
Things didn't change all too much in the next few days. Sabine still mostly spent time to herself in her bunk and ate her meals in there as well. She only ate with the rest of them every other breakfast when Zeb spared a few fruits from his personal supply run with the rest of them. Hera talked to her the most, almost always about repairing the Phantom or some mission that required a lot of booms.
Baby steps, dear, Hera had said. Change doesn't happen overnight.
Agree to disagree.
One day, after a trip from Tarkintown to the northern pole of Lothal, Kanan was heading to the cockpit with a datapad inventory for Hera to look over when he saw Zeb coming out of Sabine's room, laughing and laughing to her. He passed Kanan, chuckling under his breath about something or other.
What was that on his shoulder plating?
Chopper's unmistakable whirring and beeping came out of the room next, so Kanan arched his neck over to peek inside.
Sabine was reaching up towards the top of the wall with a large brush in hand, adding strokes to a long line of greens and yellows, while Chopper stayed next to her with a palette of paints balanced on top of him. Some drawing chalks and blocks were on the floor, and Sabine's splattered gloves were covered in their dust.
"Stay still, Chop," She ordered, standing on the tips of her boots to reach further down the colours. "You spill my paints, you're buying the next set."
The grumpy droid protested, waving his appendages around in annoyance, but complied anyway. Sabine smirked knowingly and continued to mix the colours, taking no notice of the man stepping away from the scene.
Kanan kept his eye on the artwork as he backed away, smiling when he caught sight of the stylised aurora hovering between the walls and the ceiling of Sabine's bunk. He tore his eyes away from it and forced himself to walk away, but the smile didn't leave.
The Empire would fear her yet.
Will there be more SWR fic from me?
Probably not, sorry.