So... how do I explain how this was a week late?
I had no wifi the first weekend (and I said it would be 2 weeks), and I was so goddamn busy the next weekend. I might've been able to find work-arounds, but honestly, I was just completely whacked.
Anyway, Enjoy this (late) piece, which is also probably a bit on the short side.
And the Q&A / My responses to reviews is at the bottom, as always.
Star Wars Rebels – Shattering P11 – Reflections.
"Sabine, please," Ezra's voice echoed in her mind. "If you would just let me…"
She recalled her own, insult-laden reply with a slight stab of guilt. Her reply was uncalled for, and probably cut deeper into him than she might've intended. She'd always responded with hostility, regardless of what he did, to the point where she suspected he would've thrown himself at her feet to get her to listen.
He deserves it, she told herself. He abandoned you. He got you captured, got you tortured until you couldn't tell what was true and what was a lie.
But what if he hadn't? What if she was simply confused, and it wasn't his fault?
What if…
No, she stopped herself. She couldn't go there. Not after what happened. He needed to pay.
For what?
A clang brought her back to the present, freeing her from the confines of her mind. Two mechanics walked past, struggling to move a large crate of machinery to a nearby A-wing undergoing a retrofit.
Sabine was leaning against a crate, arms folded, watching Zeb fiddle around with some wires on top of the Ghost, Chopper there to assist him.
She breathed in. The sharp burn of Cordite. The heavy stench of oil. Sweat. Steam. Smells she was familiar with. Smells she could trust. They gave her a sense of realism, and in this way secured her to reality, pushing away the memories which were always there, lingering on the edge of her mind.
The cell, by contrast, had always been odourless - until they began the torture. Then, all she'd be able to smell was the drugs they'd used on her.
And the blood.
They were in the main hanger, looking out over the mostly-fixed hull of the Hermes. Mechanics wrangled with the fighters parked in the launch bay, checking the fuel, fixing tears in the hull. In one instance, completely dismantling the craft, for some reason unbeknownst to her.
"Ah, Karabast!" Zeb swore as something sparked and he yanked his hand away to Chopper's laughs. "Shut up Chop."
Sabine quirked a smile as she watched the pair bicker on top of the Ghost.
"And why are you grinning?" Zeb looked at her and raised an annoyed eyebrow. "I don't see you helping."
She pushed off from the crates and reached the ladder up without much difficulty, only to be stopped by Zeb looking down at her from the top.
"I was only joking," he stated as she began climbing up the ladder as best she could, hand slipping slightly on the grease as she pulled herself up with just her good hand. "You shouldn't be doing this."
"Nonsense," she huffed as she hauled herself on top with some difficulty, ignoring Zeb's offered paw. "I need the exercise. I've spent too long cooped up in the ward."
"Well, I'm going to need a little help with the wiring of the short-wave comms," he ducked his head back into the access port he'd opened. "Hydrospanner."
She gave him the Hydrospanner, and he grunted a thanks, busy dismantling something. He tossed a chunk of machinery up and Sabine managed to wrap her hand around it before it could fall back down.
"Glad to see that your catching skills are up-to-speed," he grinned to himself as he pried at a panel behind where the machinery had been.
"What are you doing?" Sabine inquired after a minute of him working away at something outside of her view, putting the small item, what looked like a compressor, to one side.
He grunted. "Trying to re-wire the connection between the power source and the transmitter." He grumbled as he continued to work, apparently without any success. "The short-range transmitter is refusing to connect to the power supply."
"You should let me do that," she leaned down into the hole as well, nudging Zeb out of the way and looking for the wires. They'd all been attached to the wrong points or just left hanging down.
"Zeb, you've connected the green wire to the brown connection point!" she called up, rapidly untying the two wires and connecting them to their respective connection points.
"Oh, right," he said a little sheepishly, scratching the nape of his neck. "At least I didn't connect them to the torpedo bay."
Sabine huffed a laugh as she replaced the panel and sat up again. "But the transmitter would've self-destructed had we tried to use it with your wiring."
"Ah," he deflated slightly, ears flattening in embarrassment as Sabine grinned.
"Zeb!" a voice called from one side, below the Ghost. The ladder rattled as someone climbed up, worn metal scraping the side of the Ghost. "Hera sent me to…"
Ezra's voice trailed off as he reached the top and saw Sabine sitting there, eyes narrowed. His eyes slipped from her face and to his smudged hands that gripped the uppermost rung.
There was a frosty silence as Sabine glowered at Ezra, who did his best to avoid her gaze. Zeb looked on quietly, waiting to see what would happen.
"Ah, what did Hera want, Ezra?" Zeb inquired with a cautious go ahead gesture, feeling quite out-of-place, uncertain of what Sabine and Ezra would do.
"She wanted me to see if you needed any help," he focused on Zeb with an unnerving intensity, glad to be given something to focus on and avoid Sabine's steely gaze.
Zeb shot Sabine a glance as she crossed her arms, "I'm fine, thanks. Sabine's helping me."
Ezra hesitated, then nodded, looking down as he climbed back to tell Hera.
"Wait," Sabine's voice cracked across the air like a whip. It wasn't a request, but a demand. Ezra halted instantly, looking up at her face.
The hope in his eyes faded to disappointment as he saw the hard brown eyes stare back.
"Inside the Ghost," Sabine motioned as she got up. "We need to talk."
Ezra slid down the ladder, and Sabine followed suite, slapping away his proffered hand with a huff. They walked into the Ghost's cargo bay, where Sabine stopped Ezra with an outstretched hand. The lights were off and the darkness seemed to have a physical weight to it, despite the light streaming through the bay doors.
"Talk," Sabine practically ordered as she spun around to face Ezra. "Now."
He hesitated, faltering under her gaze and staring at the floor. "About what?"
"Don't play fool with me," she hissed, folding her arms with a glare. "You know what."
She spat the last word and Ezra flinched at the anger behind it.
"Look, Sabine, I didn't want to leave you," he began, rubbing his shoulder nervously. "I had no choice."
She made no reply, but just continued to stand there, arms crossed, looking at him cynically. The light threw a band across Sabine's chest, seeming to mock his pitiful efforts to apologize as it highlight the area in which she was stabbed.
"There were Imperials coming, and if I didn't leave, we would all be in the same position as you were," Ezra continued, opening his arms wide, honest, open eyes now staring into Sabine's.
A sudden pang of pain in her leg forced Sabine to lean against the wall, and she scowled harder to hide the fact, unwilling to reveal any weakness. The light was still lying across the injury though, and the image of a bloodied Sabine lying on the ground kept on forcing its way back into his head. He found his eyes drawn to it, until he blinked and looked away at her eyes. The cold, unforgiving eyes that he'd been accustomed to seeing on her.
Except this time they had a flicker of doubt in them.
"I don't believe you," she snarled, but the anger that had previously been so strong in her voice was suddenly lacking. The venom was gone, and her response came out as little more than a mutter.
Something prodded her mind.
"Sabine, do you remember what happened then?" Ezra's eyes bored into hers and she knew that, whatever she told herself, he was right.
It hit like a ton of bricks, and she caught herself before she could collapse in shock at the realization.
I don't know, came the whisper from her mind.
The memory came rushing back with the force of a rampaging bantha. She remembered Ezra looking down over her, eyes filled with shock and worry. A Stormtrooper off to one side, hand on Ezra's shoulder. And the pain. The memory of that rocked her to her core.
But the memory felt… off. Incomplete. Ezra was right; she didn't remember what had happened. Only part of it.
"You don't remember, do you?" Ezra stated more than asked, raising an eyebrow.
That son of a… her thought trailed off. He knows me too well.
"I don't believe you," she croaked, dragging her gaze away from him and to the floor. Their roles were reversed now; Ezra was the one asking questions and she was the one trying to avoid the piercing gaze.
"Sabine…" Ezra approached slowly, gently putting his hands on her shoulders. "Let me fill in the blanks. Let me help you."
"No." The word came out of her mouth before she could stop it, and she found herself shoving Ezra away with as much force as she could muster. "Stay away from me!" she yelled, a messy ball of fear and sadness that Zeb could hear from well outside the craft.
Ezra's eyes flickered in surprise, with a visible underlay of pain, as he turned and left the Ghost, brushing past Zeb, who was coming in.
"Sabine, what happened?" he asked, glancing back at Ezra's departing form as Sabine left out a shaky breath.
"Nothing," Sabine pushed off the wall and feigned disinterest, wishing that she could be left in peace.
"Sabine," Zeb said firmly, walking over to her even as she turned away from him. "Stop fighting it. You'll have to talk eventually, and it'll hurt more the longer you leave it."
"No, it won't," she spat, folding her arms in anger, focusing on him instead of dwelling on the painful memories that fought to occupy her thoughts.
He placed a gentle but strong hand on her shoulder and turned her so they were facing each other.
"You are blaming him for what happened without knowing exactly what happened."
"I know enough," she shrugged his hand off and turned away again.
"You don't know what he went through," he continued despite her attempt at ending the conversation. "You know as well as I do that you're using Ezra as a way to deal with the pain, because you're worried about what will happen if you have nothing to direct yourself against."
"You wouldn't know what the pain's like," she snarled, jabbing a furious finger in Zeb's chest to provoke him, now desperate to stop him pushing her towards accepting that fact.
A step at the ramp caught their attention and Zeb's retort died in his throat at the sight of Kanan calmly standing beneath them, arms folded behind his back.
"Zeb's right," Kanan said as he paced up the ramp towards them. "You don't want to think about what happened, and so to stop yourself from doing so, you're doing the easy thing and blaming Ezra for everything."
"That's not true," she leaned against the side of the bay and crossed her arms in annoyance.
"You're scared. And you're directing that fear outwards as anger, at Ezra," he didn't stop staring at her despite her annoyance. Zeb stood to one side silently, still fuming at Sabine's insult.
Sabine sighed. He did have a point.
"Fine," she muttered. "I'll be nice to Ezra."
"It's not a matter of being nice," Kanan's milky white eyes seemed to burn into hers and she hung her head. "It's a matter of talking to him and getting over your feelings about what happened. That's the only way you'll ever truly recover."
Sabine nodded and stepped down the ramp, making her way off the ship.
Zeb made a move to go after her, but Kanan stuck out an arm to stop him.
"We shouldn't interfere with this," he stated, calmly watching her leave. "What happens next is in their hands.
A beep on Kanan's wrist pad alerted him to a message. A summon to the briefing room, for a meeting on their latest mission.
The target's name was…
Scarellia.
Notes:
So, what did you think of that? I do listen to you guys, which is why you had the talk between Sabine and Ezra, because it was originally just her with Zeb and Chopper trying to get her to talk to Ezra, but I decided that she could act on her own initiative.
I apologize if it wasn't quite what you expected, but I do try.
I dropped a not-so-stuble-more-like-blindingly-obvious hint about the next location; a completely made-up planet. More info later.
Shoutout to ja54591 for helping me check the piece even though he'd been extremely busy, and to Moomkin over on fanfiction, for doing the same while ja54591 was unavailable. Can't go wrong with 2 talented writers checking it, am I right?
On to the reviews and my responses (Do you guys prefer the comments at the bottom, or would they be better at the top?):
Fanfiction:
Sleepless-actual: Ohhhhhhhhhmilaaaaaawwwwd this is so good, this fanfic might be the replacement to Flaming Rebellion seeing as it finished. And I like the idea an old republic fic. Oh could you do more between Ezra and Sabine next chapter, I really want to see how they sorry out their status. Keep up the amazing work.
Me: Thanks :) I hope you liked this piece. I am thinking on the Old Republic idea, but other than a single 2k word piece involving the Shadow of Revan, I haven't gotten anything. Not even a storyline aside from what I've already written, which is mostly a lightsaber fight.
HIIIIIIIIIIIIIII: Can you maybe do a chapter of Ezra trying to deal with the pain of Sabine hating him. Honestly I would like to see that please. Thanks! Great work by the way I love this series so far.
Me: HI HIIIIIIIIIIIIII, yeah. I was a bit disappointed with myself for not wrangling it in here, but I can fit it in the next chapter.
Sleepless-actual: When will it be 2 weeks already?
Me: Ahhhh, I get guilty every time I see this comment. I was supposed to update it then, but, you know, life got in the way. I hope the piece is of a better quality as a result
No Archive of our own comments? Aw...