Note: And here we are – I hope you enjoyed reading this, because writing it was so much fun!


The Physics of Glitter 4/4


"You're the weapons expert," he says. "You already know."

So that's Kanan's cards laid open, or as open as they get with Kanan. Sabine realises that even now, he is offering her the option of changing the course of the conversation. Pretend she doesn't know. It would make life so much simpler for all of them.

But of course she can't. "I am the weapons expert," she confirms. "Did you think I wouldn't recognise one of the most iconic weapons in the galaxy?"

More deliberate silence, and then, "I was under the impression they'd wiped all public records," says Kanan. "I suppose if you want a job done well, don't leave it to the Imperials." He sounds more than a little bitter. Though not surprised.

"They didn't wipe the records at the Academy archive," says Sabine. "But I never thought I'd see a real one, though. How did you even get it?"

"It's just a keepsake," says Kanan. "A remnant of a different time. There was a time before the Empire, you know."

"A keepsake," says Sabine. "How can a lightsabre be a keepsake? They were destroyed along with the Jedi. And you are far too young – "

It is embarrassing how long her brain has held on to this particular delusion. She really should have learned by now that no-one is ever too young for the misery the universe is dishing out. And since she got this far, she might as well just go all the way now.

She'd somehow believed – hoped – that maybe Kanan had inherited the lightsabre, or stolen it from an Imperial archive, or that he had been given it by a dying Jedi with instructions to look out for its true heir. In short, she'd hoped for a story. But this is a whole other person. A stranger.

In sum, something clicks, and it clicks hard.

"Oh my god," she says. "You were a student."

There's a pause, and then, "A padawan," says Kanan.

"You must have been what, fifteen?"

"Fourteen," he says.

"Well, shit," says Sabine.

Sabine'd been fourteen when she ran from the Academy. She knows from experience it is not a good age to have the ground pulled from under your feet.

Now that it's out, the annoying thing is that she should have guessed something like this even before today, maybe even as early as a month ago. Because how did they even meet? The Ghost fell out of lightspeed with a malfunctioning hyperdrive motivator, navigated its way through Corellian orbit outside standard sublight corridors, and stumbled over Sabine's disabled, drifting, and non-transmitting fighter.

It's so obvious in hindsight. The only way the Ghost crew could have noticed her was by a) already being in the right place, and b) looking out the window at exactly the right millisecond, and c) somehow being able to tell apart her damaged fighter from the rest of the debris. In the dark, on the night side of Corellia. It is a statistical impossibility.

"I'm so sorry, Kanan," she says, and she means it. "I studied the records, they're – I'm sorry."

"Don't be," says Kanan. "You were a little kid then, it's ancient history. Best forgotten."

"Why even bring that thing along, then?"

"It's just a wonderful weapon, best there is," says Kanan. "Having it with me always makes me think of new ways to avoid using it."

"Could you have gotten us out today?" she asks. "With the lightsabre. It was a pretty good trap, but certainly a Jedi –"

"I've seen the Jedi do amazing things," says Kanan. "Maybe. Okay, probably. I'm glad I didn't have to try."

"I'm sorry," she says. "I shouldn't have stopped you. Maybe we could have gotten the prisoners out after all."

"Yeah, about that," he says off-handedly, "that was the other other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Should have probably lead with that, but got a bit side-tracked. Sorry."

With these words, he hands her his macrobinoculars.

Wait. What?

"Hera and I reviewed the recordings I made from the roof today," he says. "There's a tiny detail that should probably have popped out to us at the time, but, as you remember, the Stormtroopers decided to have a party in the middle of our op – see if you can spot it?"

Sabine raises the binoculars to her eyes, turns the knob to fast-forward the recording.

"Concentrate on the prisoner transport after the tanks have finished their defensive manoeuvre," says Kanan. "What do you see?"

"Stormtroopers?" says Sabine, squinting at the tiny screen. "A rather surprising amount, actually."

"Twelve," says Kanan.

"Well, that can't be right," says Sabine. She lowers the macros, blinks into the sunset, then raises them again.

"No," confirms Kanan. "Because that transporter type –"

"– seats twelve," says Sabine. "Eight if they're using enhanced restraints. Where are the prisoners?"

"Nowhere near the market square, that's for sure," says Kanan. He shrugs. "There's nothing you or I could have done differently today. Aborting that operation was the right call."

"Huh," says Sabine. For a moment, she's just sitting there, amazed that they all managed to return in one piece from a mission that impossible.

"Not a great first op for you, sorry," says Kanan. "More luck next time. Are you coming down? We're playing Sabacc."

"In a bit," says Sabine.

Kanan nods, then he unfolds his legs to get up, rights himself on the sloping hull, and turns to leave.

"Kanan," she says after him. "One last question."

He stops, but doesn't say a word.

Sabine hesitates, but the truth is, she really needs to know. "How do you even live after this?" she says.

With Kanan, sometimes there's laughter where she doesn't expect it. "Well, we decided we're not relying on that informant again. That should increase the odds."

"I meant, how do you live after something like Order 66, but if you're going to be like that…" says Sabine. "I'm asking you how, because right now I don't – I don't see how. Tell me."

"It is a long story," says Kanan. "And it'll have to be brief, because yours will be different. It was another time. I was another person. My life sort of evolved away from all that. And I found people who moved it along. Not just Hera, all sorts of people. Some were good people, some… weren't."

"And how does that work?" she says. "If one… evolves… what then? Does the pain go away?"

She hopes Kanan understands what she means by pain, and she has a feeling he does. She means the guilt, the knowledge she's been on the wrong side of history for too long. The betrayal by her friend. Above all, the crushing certainty that history is quickly hurtling down a terrible trajectory and there may be nothing she can do about it. Some of this he shares, some he doesn't, but does it matter? It is always pain.

"The pain you are feeling now," he says, "think of it a forge for the person you are going to be. And as that person, you will be able to breathe without it choking you. Not now, and maybe not soon, but you will. And it's worth persevering, Sabine."

"And is that for everyone, or just for Jedi?"

At this moment, she acutely realises that this, right now, is a moment she'll remember forever. Kanan standing on the deck of the Ghost, in the last rays of the fading sunset. His face hidden in shadows, but he knows, he knows what she's feeling, and he knows what comes next. And the fact that he's still here to talk to her about this means that it can be fine. Maybe it will be fine. She can't put into words the relief she feels at this thought.

He shrugs. "How would I know?" he says. "I never finished my training."

"You and me both, old man."

He laughs, holds out his hand to her, and to her own surprise, she takes it, even though she is perfectly capable of getting up by herself.


"Sabine, are you there? Can you hear me? I saw you get hit. Tell me you're okay."

Ketsu's voice through the radio sounds increasingly urgent.

"I'm fine," says Sabine, pressing down the transmit button after an agonising moment of considering the issue from all sides. It's not strictly true, after all.

"The fighter isn't," she continues after a quick look at the console. "Steering and weapons failing, life support on auxiliary. I'm sending out the distress beacon, pick me up sometime soon, okay?"

A pause, and then, "Hey drama queen, can you hear me? Answer me, please!"

With some lingering confusion and a beginning sense of dread, Sabine thumps the sublight radio. It's no good. The transmitter is out: She can receive, but not send. She sets her last message on a loop, just in case the transmitter decides to go online again.

"Okay, Sabine, looks like the pirates are off your back. I bet they think they got you," Ketsu's voice cuts through the static, and as usual, her false bravado sounds remarkably like real bravado. "I spotted an opening and I'm breaking through."

There's nothing to say except, "Hell no!", but Ketsu just keeps on talking.

"– never get a job with them again if we don't deliver. I'll be waiting for you at rendezvous and I'm trusting you to turn up. You hear me? Good lu-"

The silence that follows is the receiver failing as well.

Okay, thinks Sabine, okay. Don't panic now, Wren. Ketsu is gone, but she wasn't being much help anyway. Don't panic.

How?

Time to consider her assets: No weapons, no steering, no communication, and the way things are going, probably no distress beacon, either. Auxiliary power for maybe another two hours. Exactly none of that is good news.

On the plus side: If Ketsu can't spot her in the debris, the pirate fleet that attacked them probably can't either. That means two hours of relative peace and quiet for making the necessary repairs. Oh well, she's had worse.

The really bad news arrive with a bang, and Sabine is pressed hard into the back of her seat. Some high-velocity debris seems to have hit the fighter's nose straight on, but that should have been no problem for the shock absorbers.

Uh-oh.

So those are out, too. Even worse, when she lets her arms sink back from her face – a pointless, time-wasting defensive movement – it becomes clear that the collision has reduced her short list of assets down to nothing.

It's dark and still in the cabin. All lights are off.

"Shit," she mutters, with emphasis. "So much for auxiliary power." No, wait, one light is still on: directly overhead, the independently powered flight recorder is blinking red. Waiting for a status report, last words, something.

Oh god.

Sabine breathes out. Not panicking is still part of her plan. "Well then," she says. "Everything is out except for the flight recorder. Without auxiliary power, air will run out in about ten minutes, unless I can release the mechanical valve of the oxygen tank. … Let's just hope nothing is burning."

Unfortunately, to even get to the oxygen tank, Sabine will have to unstrap from her seat, which is about the opposite of ideal, since she is still drifting at an estimated four hundred miles per hour through a debris field. Without shock absorbers.

Making any sorts of actual repairs on the ship under these circumstances will be impossible. Her best option, unfortunately, is to strap herself back in after she's sorted out the oxygen, and rely on that and her armour to save her from the worst of the collisions to come until help gets there.

Or maybe she'll just take longer to die.

"Okay," she says. "I'll probably get about one shot at this, so let's think how it's going to go." Talking to whichever anonymous person is going to have to listen to the flight recorder later on calms her down a bit. She takes one valuable minute just to think this through.

With the central computer out, the fighter's old-fashioned nuclear fission unit will default to a self-limiting atomic decay process. Some heat from that is radiated into the cabin, not enough to sustain the temperature, but will keep it from dropping to deadly for maybe eight hours.

Her armour will protect her from the worst effects of freezing for another two to three hours, probably. Thus, the limiting factor will be the fighter's oxygen tank. Without a functioning air recycling unit, it will run out in about nine, plus twenty or so minutes of oxygen provided by the armour.

Even as she reports this worst-case scenario for the flight recorder, she realises it's a tight schedule for Ketsu. She'll need to deliver the droids, turn around on the spot, wait for her at the rendezvous point, realise Sabine won't turn up, and come find her. It sounds frankly impossible.

"Well," she says. "First things first. Oxygen tank."

Sabine peels herself out of her seat and pushes off in zero gravity. Not even the light of distant stars reaches the small storage compartment behind her seat, and she feels for the oxygen valve with her gloved hands. Tries it ones, twice, the mechanism is stuck a little. On the third try she is relieved to hear a faint hiss –

Something hits the fighter sideways and it spirals away. Sabine is tumbling like a puppet. Her helmet takes most of the pounding, her armour decelerates her body's contortions, but between that and the sickening centrifugal forces pressing her into gnarly bits of the fighter's interior, this is probably it.

Drifting into unconsciousness, her thoughts get stuck on the last idea she had: Get back into the seat. Close the safety belt. Hope for help.

She's going to get back into that seat if it's the last thing she will do, and she does.

She closes the safety belt.

And with the last shred of her consciousness, she hopes for help.

But no-one is coming and she succumbs to darkness.


But someone came anyway, and it wasn't Ketsu.

Sabine's eyes fly open at this thought. On the opposite wall, the rising phoenix stares back at her. Something too new to understand right now.

What she wants to know is, does Ketsu have these dreams, too? Is she haunted by the memory of hearing nothing but static from the radio, by her decision to just fly away?

But that's not Ketsu's style.

Sabine is still lying motionless on her bed, convince her body that it's warm, that the air will not run out anytime soon, convince her brain to continue operating despite the stark unfairness of it all.

In the middle of this argument, there's another knock on her door. She must admit it's a nice change from the Academy. All this knocking before entering.

Apart from that, she feels like rolling her eyes. Kanan again? So she might admit under pressure that yesterday's heart-to-heart hasn't been completely unhelpful, but Sabine feels that she is quickly approaching the not very generous limits of her ability to open up. (She suspects Kanan has been stretching his, as well).

Also, he'll probably guess what she's dreamt. Damn Jedi.

"Come in," she says.

But no. This time, it's Hera in the doorframe, balancing a box of random rusty cans in one hand and a coffee in the other.

Oh god. She bets Hera has come to lay down the law with regard to Kanan. Hera has probably put that down on her to-do list this morning. Somewhere between Repair the repulsors and Calibrate the airlocks, there's a line saying Explain to naive teenage girl that Kanan Jarrus is out of bounds. Sabine cringes at the thought.

"I'm going for a run in a bit," she says, hoping that this will keep the conversation as short and painless as possible.

"Thought so," says Hera, not mentioning the fact that Sabine is still very much horizontal. "Wow, Kanan didn't lie. You really have an eye for colour."

She's standing in front of the mural that Sabine has completed over night. Took a while, but it certainly gave her opportunity to think all of this through.

"Nice flow," says Hera. "You know. Swirly. What is it, a phoenix in flight?"

"Kanan tipped you off, didn't he," says Sabine from somewhere underneath her blankets.

"Neither of us set out to be ornithologists," says Hera apologetically. "And yes, Sabine. We talk."

Sabine knows Hera is scrutinising her, so she may as well emerge. A bit. She probably has the galaxy's worst bed head. So what? She isn't out to impress anyone right now.

"I know you do," says Sabine. "About that –"

"He is worried about a remark you made yesterday," says Hera. "And I am, too." Her tone is firm, but also a lot more gentle than Sabine would have expected.

What could Kanan be worried about? she ponders. Something that Hera hadn't known before? Sabine's Imperial past? Her attempts to join Black Sun? Her knowledge of Order 66? Given the choices, it's probably wise to play stupid.

"What did he say I said?" she says.

"You asked him how he lived after what happened to him," says Hera. "Apparently, you said, and I quote, I don't see how."

So it's not only Hera who is extremely perceptive. It's both of them. Being a part of this crew is going to be exhausting.

"Sabine," says Hera. "You were talking about yourself, weren't you? What did you mean by that?"

Translation: Is it just teenage drama, or is she actually going off the rails? She's touched that they care.

And here's the difference, she realises belatedly: Ketsu would have ignored a remark like this. And Sabine would have ignored her ignoring this.

And that was how you ended up left for dead in a drifting ship. Sabine would have none of that again.

"I don't see how right now," says Sabine. "But I'm not giving up, either."

"And should you ever change your mind –" Hera continues.

"I don't think I will –"

"Should you ever change your mind," says Hera, "you come to us. We have your back against the galaxy, we have your back against yourself. Understood?"

Why does Sabine have the feeling Hera has had much the same conversation before?

Sabine lets her head sink back into the pillow. "'kay," she says, going full circle.

"That's good enough for now," says Hera after a small pause. "Well then, rise and shine. I thought you wanted to go for a run. It's only going to get hot later."

"Yes, mom," says Sabine, somewhat involuntarily. "Oh god." She rises, a bit, and Hera is still in the doorframe, and suddenly Sabine has the impulse to bring up even the last possible source of fraction. It's probably because she's been an emotional teen for about a week now.

"So you talked to Kanan yesterday," Sabine says. "About me? And you're not -"

Hera cuts her off. "Oh, I'm not worried about any of that," she says, with a slight grin. "You share a ship with Kanan, you'll start wanting to clip him 'round the ears soon enough." She actually winks.

"Looking forward," mumbles Sabine. With some effort, she finally gets into an upright position. Her shoulder, where she smashed into the back of her pilot's seat a month ago, seems pretty okay today.

And Hera has still not left. She is again absorbed in the mural, her back to Sabine.

"We'll have to figure out what to do about this, of course," says Hera.

"It washes off," says Sabine miserably. So that's what's in Hera's box of rusty cans? Cleaning supplies? It's a pity, Sabine is starting to get attached to the phoenix design. The next iteration, she decides, will have to be even more stylised.

Maybe as a small middle finger to people who can't tell a phoenix from a duck.

"Yeah, no," says Hera. "I've got something for you. I was buying spare parts for the repulsors this morning, and this box here just caught my eye."

It turns out that Sabine has grossly mis-categorised the box that Hera has brought, and that it actually is full of spray paint cans, all at different points on the empty-to-full continuum. Turquoise, egg yolk yellow, hot pink, scarlet red, lime green, indigo blue, gold, silver, bronze, brilliant white, and dusky black. Sabine knows the brand, they're used for varnishing land gliders. Definitely not washable. Her hands are itching to try them out.

"I thought you might want to paint something more permanent," says Hera. "Your room only, mind."

"And is that if I join the crew or –" says Sabine.

"Either way," says Hera. "Though do not kid yourself, this is a bribe for you to stay."

"And you know," Hera adds, almost as an afterthought, "I only recruit people who have proven I can trust them. That includes Zeb, Chopper, Kanan – and you."

"Thank you, Hera," says Sabine, already weighing the can of scarlet in her hands. "I made my decision."


The End.