A/N: This is just a silly little story I wrote for the holiday (the best holiday ever because you know what? Candy corn is awesome and what is Halloween without candy corn?). I've been out of the writing game for a while, so it's a little (a lot) rough, but I hope it's at least mildly entertaining. Don't worry about when it takes place in the show timeline or any of that. Season 3 or 4 ish as far as ages, personalities, relationships, etc.
"I still don't see why I can't come." Sabine whined uncharacteristically as she watched Zeb and Kanan readying the two 'borrowed' Imperial speeder bikes for their trip.
"I already told you," Hera said with a tinge of exasperation. "Chopper has the technical readouts for the parts we need, Zeb knows someone in town who owes him money that we could really use right now, I need Kanan there to give us the heads up if anything feels out of place, and someone needs to keep these three out of trouble, and that's me."
"Yeah but..." Sabine trailed off, gazing out the lowered ramp of the cargo bay into the murky twilight. She could already smell the dank and musty scent of the swamplands in which they had been forced to land the Ghost drifting through the open bay door. Chirps, creaks, and any number of other ominous sounds from who knew what unseen creatures could be heard amidst the setting sun. The last vestiges of a pale green sky turning black illuminated gigantic red plants around their landing spot.
"And-" Hera continued, shutting down the argument she knew was beginning to smolder "these bikes only fit four people and we still need someone to fly the ship if anything goes wrong. That's you."
"Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself!" Ezra objected from his spot leaning against the wall. Truth be told, he was more than fine with the arrangement, for a number of reasons, though he knew now was not the time to voice those particular thoughts.
"You're...acceptable." Hera told him, sitting herself down behind Kanan on the first bike. "We should be back sometime tomorrow morning, early afternoon at the latest. Coms won't work as far out as we need to go, so you know what to do if we're not back by then. Sabine's in charge while we're gone."
"Hey!" Ezra shouted, finally standing up to debate the point, but the bikes were already moving.
"Have fun you two!" Zeb laughed as he and Chopper zipped out of the bay, leaving the two teens alone.
Sabine peered out into the dim light and did her best to hide a shudder. She was a tough woman. She knew it and so did everyone else, and those that didn't soon learned. But large bodies of water had always made her...apprehensive. Not scared of course, never that. It was just unsettling, not knowing what could be lurking beneath the soft ripples on the surface.
With one last sigh, she tapped the control to raise the ramp and turned to look at the last remaining crewmate.
"Well you heard her, I'm in charge Specter Six." She smirked to cover her nerves.
"Yeah, yeah." Ezra huffed, waving her off. "So what do you want to do? We've got like 20 hours to kill."
"I don't know about you, but I've got a project to finish. I'll be in the Acting-Captain's quarters." Sabine breezed by him with a gleam in her eye, heading to her room.
Sweat poured off Ezra's face as he finished yet another round of saber drills. The old training sphere Kanan had picked up from a junk dealer in the Outer Rim had seen better days, but it got the job done. He'd only been struck by the low power stun bolts a handful of times even on maximum difficulty, and even then, only in the beginning when he was still distracted and hadn't had his head in the game. The shocks did wonders for forcing one to focus on the job at hand and clear all else from his mind.
With one final backflip over the training sphere, he deflected the last three shots of the program harmlessly into the bulkhead.
"Not bad," a sweet voice said from behind and above him.
"You wanna give it a try?" Ezra asked. He took a long sip of water from a bottle and gave Sabine a playfully challenging glare.
"I might be good at a lot of things, but predicting the future isn't one of them. I'll leave that to you Jedi."
"That's for the best." Ezra said, effortlessly leaping up to the upper level of the cargo bay to stand next to Sabine. "Probably too much of a challenge for you anyway. I thought you had a project you needed to finish, Acting-Captain".
"Oh, he's got jokes," Sabine laughed back, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "I got bored, and I ran out of a color I need."
"Didn't we just get you more paint last time we stopped in port?" Ezra asked, handing her a second water bottle.
"Yes, we did" Sabine said irritably, "but apparently I used more than I thought because I'm already out of crimson".
"Whatever are you going to do now?" Ezra Ezra affected sympathy, but his eyes shone with mirth.
"Well I was thinking about coming down here to knock some humility into you. That is if you think you're ready for something a little more challenging than a toy." She glanced at the training sphere.
"Why, so you can give me another black eye?" Ezra shot back, quirking his eyebrow at her. The 'present' she had given him for his 17th birthday had become a bit of a running joke between them, and she took the bait as always.
"You keep talking like that and maybe I will" she said, stripping down to her form fitting workout top and athletic pants. Mandalorians used every weapon they had available to them, and she knew full well this was a particularly potent one with this opponent.
"You're on, Lady Wren. This'll be easy"
It wasn't. Not for either of them. After agreeing to only use physical abilities, meaning no gadgets for her and no Force for him, the two had laid into each other for over an hour. The line between playful sparring and nearly real fighting had been crossed a few times, but only just so, and only because each trusted the other implicitly not to take things too far.
That had all ended an hour ago, after both had become too tired, sore, and sweaty to do much more than grapple on the ground, all technique and finesse forgotten. Sabine's feminine distractions had worked like a charm in the last round, and when Ezra's face had gotten a little too close to a certain area, she had been able to send him sprawling across the deck. She had since joined him and the two lay on the ground, still catching their breath and talking about what they might do with their lives once the war was over, a favored topic of the young and idealistic.
Ezra laid there for few minutes, counting the rivets on the ceiling before voicing what was on his mind.
"You alright?" He asked.
Sabine glanced at him with a slightly annoyed look.
"Yeah, why?"
"I dunno...ever since we landed here you seem so...on edge."
"It's nothing. You'd just laugh at me anyway," she finally admitted.
"I swear I won't" Ezra pleaded, partly out of real concern for his best friend, but mostly because if it was funny enough, he would laugh, and take every opportunity in the future he could to bring it up again. Such was their relationship, and neither would change that for anything.
She laughed. "I don't believe you."
He looked over with a grin. "Yeah, I wouldn't believe me, either."
They fell quiet.
"I'm so bored," Sabine groaned finally, breaking the companionable silence from her spot next to Ezra, their fingers barely touching, neither wishing to break the brief contact. "And no, I'm still not telling you what has me 'on edge,'" she said in an exaggerated tone.
"That wasn't exciting enough for you?" Ezra asked turning his head to look at her.
Sabine nearly made a comment about how rolling around on the ground with Ezra was exciting enough, but bit her tongue. Such thoughts had become a regular and pesky occurrence to her, and not something she was willing to even begin to confront right now.
"Not even close. Entertain me, Specter Six." Sabine commanded mockingly.
"Nah. I won more rounds than you, so I think you should be the one to come up with what we do next. Besides, I gotta use the fresher," Ezra said, finally getting to his feet and calling his lightsaber to him.
"Go make us some caf then. I'll be up in a bit" Sabine still refused to rise.
"Don't tell me I tired you out that bad" Ezra winked.
"You wish." Sabine's tone was entirely too sultry, and she locked eyes with him for a brief instant that lasted an eternity.
Ezra nearly choked at the comeback. While a little flirtatious banter was nothing new between them, and certainly not from him, only recently had he noticed she was sending it back as well as he gave.
"Yeah well...I'll be in the common room," he said lamely, making for the door. Sabine only smiled.
Sabine opened her eyes with a start, hearing the rumble of a thunderclap echoing in this distance. Even through the thick armored hull, the sound was still obvious as to what it was. One hell of a storm was cooking and she knew it.
"Just perfect," she groused, getting to her feet and exiting the cargo bay.
"Ezra?" Sabine said aloud after reaching the upper deck, walking into the common room but finding it empty, two mugs of steaming caf still waiting on the counter top.
"I must have really taken it out of him," she said to herself, reaching for one of the mugs. Her palm hadn't covered half the distance when it happened:
The lights went out, plunging the room into inky blackness.
"What the hell?" Sabine said, looking around quickly. On the floor, dim red emergency lights flared to life, giving some minor illumination but not nearly enough for comfort.
"Ezra!" she shouted down the hall, waiting to hear his familiar voice in return, but hearing absolutely nothing. No engine sounds, no panel beeps, and no Ezra.
Sabine moved slowly through the hallway to the accommodation section, making for Ezra and Zeb's shared room. It was locked, but she had long since weaseled the code out of him. Of course, in order to use that code, she needed power. Mumbling with annoyance, she cranked the manual override and slowly forced the door open, fully expecting to see him trying to do the same from the other side.
But the room was empty and undisturbed.
"Seriously?" she huffed, turning around to her own cabin.
The door was already open.
"I swear, if you broke into my room, the beating I gave you in the cargo bay is..." she stopped talking when she entered her room. It too was vacant. But unlike Ezra's room, something was wrong.
Very wrong.
Her helmet, her vambraces, even her prized WESTARs were simply gone. Nothing else was out of place. Only her weapons and tools.
"Alright, that's it." She said angrily. "Turning out the lights is one thing, but taking my stuff is something else. I thought you had grown past this crap" she grumbled, stomping out of the room into the dim corridor and towards the refresher.
After cranking yet another manual override, and banging her fingers on the controls in the process, she shouted into the room.
"If you're in here, I'm coming in, and you'd damn well better have a good explanation for this!" she nearly screamed, stalking into the small room and pulling the door of the shower unit and the stalls open in turn, again finding nothing.
"Now I really am going to give him another black eye!" She slammed the shower door closed.
Screeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaccccchhhh
The sound nearly made her jump out of her socks and grit her teeth. Metal grinding roughly against metal could be the only source of such a noise, and it sounded as if it were coming from all over the hull.
Sabine's heartrate quickened as she remembered where exactly they were and the disturbing environment outside. Images of tentacles, claws, and rows of sharp teeth flashed through her mind in an instant, drawing a gasp.
Hera just had to set them down in this damn swamp and leave her here with this damn idiot boy.
"There is nothing out there. It's just water. The sensors would have picked up life forms" she told herself, trying to stifle the rising fear in her gut. Sabine Wren did not shake easily. Not from bounty hunters, pirates, slavers, or Stormtroopers. But she was now acutely regretting never telling Hera about the one thing that did make her nervous; large bodies of water and whatever might lay beneath them.
"I can fix this," she said, this time in a louder and more certain voice. "Ezra probably got locked in somewhere when the power went out. If I can get that back on, we can take off and go anywhere else. Hera will understand."
With the beginning of a plan in mind, she glanced around the corner out of the refresher into the dark and empty hallway, intending to make her way to the engineering section.
That's when it caught her eye. A small object, glinting in the dim red light of a floor emergency light. A familiar cylindrical object she knew almost as well as she knew its owner...and there was a dark pool of red fluid on the ground right next to it.
"No...no..." she said, rushing over to pick up the dropped lightsaber, nearly stumbling to the ground in the darkness.
Sabine closed her eyes tightly, foolishly wishing that when she opened them again, everything would be back to normal. Her fingers closed around the hilt of the weapon and she knew it was all too real.
"Ezra..." She choked on his name, tears and panic welling. On uncertain legs, she wobbled as she stood, feeling the familiar grooves of his weapon in her hands. Whatever else happened, at least she was armed once again, and was now extremely grateful that Ezra had continued training her in using a lightsaber.
With a press of a button, relief flowed through her as bright emerald light bathed the corridor-
Then faltered. Once, twice, three times; the green blade flickered and finally extinguished.
"Damn it!" she shouted, shaking the hilt and pressing the activation switch over and over. The saber was dead.
BANG
Sabine jumped with a yelp, whirling around and holding the dead saber like a club. This sound was much closer now. It was coming from inside the ship.
Click click click click
Small tapping sounds could be heard above her. Maybe from the outer hall, maybe from a ventilation shaft. The closest thing it sounded like to her was the legs of the Krykna spiders from back on Attollon.
This was it. Unarmored, unarmed, totally alone and unable to contact anyone for help, Sabine knew this might be the end. But she wasn't out of the fight yet. If this was to be the end of her story, she would make it one worth telling.
'The weapons locker!' she suddenly remembered. Hera kept a smaller cabinet of blasters just outside the engineering compartment. If she could make it there, she could win this.
It would of course mean going through engineering. And given that this crisis had begun with the power being cut, there was a good chance she wouldn't be alone.
Sabine dashed up the hallway towards the cockpit, holding onto a sliver of hope that there might be something she could do from there, but her long years of experience on the freighter told her that it was impossible to fix something like this from the cockpit without the help of an astromech. She gazed up through the transparisteel canopy into the now fully darkened sky and saw a torrent of raindrops pattering on the surface, obscuring any sign of what was outside.
'Maybe it was just the rain?' she told herself, already knowing it was a lie. That last sound had come from inside; she had no doubt about that.
She quickly located the real objective for her trip to the cockpit: the small flashlight Hera kept in her maintenance tools. The Captain and pilot of the Ghost was never more than a few paces away from her tools, and Sabine was glad she had learned all of Hera's various hiding spots. She knew all of Kanan's too, and thought that if she lived through whatever the kriff this was, she'd be hunting down a very stiff drink.
Flicking the switch and thanking her ancestors this light had actually managed to stay on for more than a few seconds, she peered back out into the empty accommodation hallway. She reached back for one more item, a hefty wrench with a decent weight to it. It paled in comparison to a good blaster, but one had to make do, and Sabine was no stranger to unarmed or melee combat.
She knew the route by heart, even in the darkness. Down the central corridor past the crew bunks, right at the intersection and down the ramp to the cargo deck. Then through the port storage room, past the main cargo bay, and finally to the engineering compartment. After that, she would be in the starboard storage room where the rest of the personal weapons were stashed.
A trip of maybe 100 meters, maybe a little less. A more tentative person would have crept the whole way, looking and listening for whatever hidden dangers might be around each corner. But Sabine was a Mandalorian above all else. Hesitation is for cowards and dead men.
She ran.
The rumbles of thunder, now directly overhead, drowned out the soft sounds of her footsteps in the hallway despite her quickened pace. She had nearly slipped on the pool of...she couldn't bring herself to admit what she feared it was, while running through the upper deck, and a dark red streak now stained her workout pants where she fell. But she had made it. She was outside the engineering compartment, light and wrench in hand and ready for battle.
And the door was already open. Hera never left it open.
She knew it was a tactical error, but she couldn't help herself. She had to try one more time. Opening her mouth, she whispered loudly into the black room "Ezra!"
There was no answer. Whatever had happened to him, or whatever had taken him, he wasn't down here with her. And now she might be facing the same foe, armed with hand tools and her wits where a trained Jedi with his lightsaber had been bested.
"I'll be with you again soon, one way or another," she whispered to herself. This was it, the last stretch.
She stepped into the doorway and quickly ducked to the side, holding the light away from her body as to not silhouette herself against it. Blank control panels, silent machinery, worn but clean cabinets and workstations, and carefully packaged parts bins lined the walls. She took another step forward, shining the light to the rear of the compartment where she knew the door to the second storeroom lie.
Two more steps forward, another low rumble of thunder, and another step.
She almost didn't hear it with the storm outside, but her keen ears still picked up the sound. She whirled around and directed the light to the source of the disturbance, raising the wrench above her, her own beating heart nearly pounding out of her chest.
A single can of lubricant rolled slowly across the floor, stopping directly in front of her. No sign of where it had come from or what had set it in motion.
And still, the storm outside raged.
Sqquueaakkkkk
Again, from behind her, this time in the direction of her goal. For the second time in as many seconds, she frantically reoriented towards the source of danger.
The door to the storeroom was now open, and she could see the weapons lock on the far side of the room through the door.
She made a break for it, sprinting through the open doorway and towards the locker, ready to bash the lock off if need be.
It was only ten meters. Ten measly meters she could have covered in a few bounds. Ten meters between her and a chance at salvation.
But it was too far. She never made it to the locker.
Skidding to a halt just a meter or two in front of the cabinet, she raised the wrench one final time to force the door open to arm herself, and suddenly found her hand much lighter and missing precisely one wrench. It had been ripped out of her hand before she could even make one move to defend herself.
And that's when she heard it.
Laughing.
It was the most infuriating, maddening, and delightful sound she had ever heard.
Another light blazed into the room, held by one Ezra Bridger, right under his chin and giving him a darkly menacing visage, her wrench floating in the air in front of him.
"Sabine Wren...didn't anyone ever teach you not to run in the halls with the lights off?"
Sabine's own flashlight clattered to the ground, her arms falling to her side. Relief, fury, astonishment, rage, joy, and exasperation flooded through her at the sight of Ezra, alive and well, and apparently in much better spirits than her. She was so overcome with emotion she could have kissed him then and there, and a part of her that she kept tucked deep inside her admitted she would not mind that one bit.
Then it dawned on her exactly what was really going on, so she did the next best thing.
SLAP!
Even his Force abilities has barely given him enough warning to know it was coming, and he was still too busy laughing to do anything about it.
"I hate you so much!" Sabine screamed, throwing herself into his arms and wrapping him in a suffocating embrace, her right palm still stinging from the strike. "You are literally the worst, most annoying, insufferable excuse for a boy I've ever met" she said quietly in his ear, giving him one last squeeze before ending the hug.
"Well you did order me to entertain you, Acting-Captain!" Ezra laughed triumphantly.
Sabine only glared at him, her mouth open, unable to form even a single word.
"C'mon, let's get these lights back on." Ezra pulled his lightsaber out of her hand and into his. She watched as he fidgeted with the power cell then once again the green blade leapt out of the hilt and vanished a second later, but this time on Ezra's command.
"I thought this was a nice touch." Ezra said proudly, clipping the weapon to his belt then leading them to the circuit breaker panel in the corner.
"My crimson paint..." Sabine said, putting the pieces together. "You're paying me back for that. Double. And you're doing my laundry for a month. I slipped and fell in it upstairs."
"I wish I could have seen that." Ezra chuckled, shining the light at the bright red paint stain on her right thigh.
"Get these lights on or your clothes are going to be stained red, and for real," she said through gritted teeth.
"Sheesh, yes ma'am." Ezra told her placatingly. At least he had a good time with the prank, and that's what really mattered right?
"And if there is so much as a scratch on my armor or weapons..." she told him finally, her own menacing glare burning into his eyes.
"Not a scratch. You've got my word on it," Ezra said, chagrinned.
"Anyways, last time Zeb and I got stuck on repair duty, he told me that if you don't insert the control chips in the right direction, it can cut main power to the whole ship. So I just reversed one of them. It's right over here." he continued, changing the subject and hoping she would let it pass.
"I know where it is." Sabine said curtly. "I was fixing this ship when you were still stealing Jogun fruit on Lothal."
Sabine brushed past him briskly and found the panel, leaning over to peer inside. Sure enough, there was something amiss where the control chips were normally housed.
"Um Ezra? You said you just reversed it?"
"Yeah, just flip it back and the system will reboot."
"It's gone." She said flatly.
"What?"
"You heard me. It's gone. Check your pockets," she ordered him.
"It's not here" Ezra said, patting his pants and jacket, and growing more worried by the second.
"Did you check all of them? Even the back?" She asked, crossing her arms and giving him and even look.
"Yes! You think I don't know my own clothes?"
"Well put that light to good use and start looking. You broke it, you fix it." She said as she stepped closer to him.
Another clap of thunder and lightning echoed through the halls and she made her move.
Giving a girlish yelp that was not entirely feigned, she stumbled forward right into Ezra, sending the both of them tumbling to the ground, he on his back and her laying directly on top of him.
The light from the dropped flashlights gave barely enough illumination to see the shock on his face, only inches away from hers.
Neither spoke and neither moved. Ezra felt her heart through the thin material of their clothes, and closed his eyes, telling himself he wasn't feeling other...things. Her chest was pressed right against his, and it left little to the imagination.
If this was going to work, Sabine had deal with one other annoying trick this boy had up his sleeve: he could sense emotions. After the prank he played on her, she owed him a little payback, and this would be a splendid way to kill two birds with one stone.
So she let herself go inside. She opened that box in her heart she kept firmly locked at nearly all times. Only a few times in the privacy of her own bunk or the shower did she allow herself to think these sorts of thoughts, but she let herself do it now, and she could feel her own reaction starting to grow inside her. And from the look on Ezra's face, the Force was letting him in on it.
Her own mind betraying her on purpose, she moved her left hand from the ground and placed it lightly on his chest. Her right hand was placed on the ground near his waist. She could feel him trembling beneath her, and even without the Force, she could nearly taste the excitement, apprehension, and nervousness pouring off him.
"Sabine? Ezra whispered huskily, his own voice catching in his throat.
"Yes?" she said, her head leaning forward just so, catching his full attention so her right hand could make its move.
"What are you doing?" he asked in a shaking voice.
He didn't feel a thing. She knew it. He was too enraptured by the other sensations she was giving him to notice the tiny control chip being slipped into his jacket pocket.
"Just thinking..." she answered in a silky voice, grabbing a fistful of his shirt near his neck.
He had to ask.
"What about?"
"Just that..." she said, leaning forward to whisper in his ear.
"Hera is going to kill you when she finds out you broke her ship"
Happy Halloween ya'll!
And as always, a million thanks to one of the best darn writers on this while site, SweetSinger2010 for all of her encouragement, help, advice, and just all around greatness.