It was a landmark achievement. After nearly a year of Thrawn outsmarting the Ghost crew at every turn, the tables had finally turned. Thrawn sat stiff-backed in the Ghost's cargo-hold-turned-brig. His wrists wore binders. His lips wore a severe frown.

Ezra and Sabine stood in front of their captive. They shared bewildered grins over their newest acquisition. "I can't believe we kidnapped Grand Admiral Thrawn. Right off the bridge of the Chimaera, too!"

"Neither will anyone else. The premise of this narrative is absurd," Thrawn deadpanned. His eyes stared straight ahead. With their red glow, it seemed almost as if he could bore a hole in the airlock. Unfortunately, he lived in the wrong universe for laser vision.

"What should we do with him?" Sabine asked. "Ransom him to fund the rebellion?"

"No, the Empire would put trackers on the credits. We'd expose our base." Ezra mulled it over. "We should do the same thing he would do to us in this situation. Interrogate him for secrets about the Empire."

Thrawn's frown deepened. On a less dignified man, his exhale would have been a scoff. "As if I would divulge any information to the pair of you."

Ezra stepped closer to Sabine. He leaned in to whisper, "he's right. We might have to torture him first."

"You wanna bring in Chopper?"

The thought sent nausea through Ezra's stomach. He remembered the last time Chopper had assisted with an interrogation. That droid had the highest kill count of the group for a reason. "Hold on. We don't have to do that."

Thrawn tilted his head five degrees to the left. "Are either one of you capable of conducting a torture session? Perhaps I will have to wait for more serious rebels to arrive."

Sabine elbowed Ezra in the side. She hid her mouth behind a hand so Thrawn couldn't catch what she said. "You know, it doesn't have to be physical torture. We still have those 'thank you gifts' from the Wookies we rescued."

Ezra nodded eagerly. For Thrawn's sake, he put on a show. "Okay, you got us. We're too young and innocent to torture you ourselves."

"But you know… it'll be a few hours before we land anywhere. Why don't we use this time to hang out?" Sabine sauntered over to her holovid player. "You like art, right Thrawn?"

Thrawn narrowed his eyes. "I shouldn't have to answer that question."

"You're right. I know you do. And you know I like art too. So let's analyze a masterpiece together." Sabine's smile grew wider by the second. "Will you prepare the popcorn, Ezra?"

Ezra's face was also developing its own slasher quality. "I've been waiting for this moment." He hopped off to bring the refreshments, leaving Sabine alone with Thrawn.

Thrawn considered breaking free at that moment. As a Mandalorian, Sabine was a talented fighter. But the girl was also small, distracted, and unarmed. If Thrawn took her by surprise, he would be able to subdue her. He could steal her comm. Call his crew.

Yet for all of Thrawn's embarrassment regarding his capture, he was also intrigued. What piece of art could possibly substitute a torture session? It would take a clever, sadistic hand to create art effective at inflicting pain on its viewers. If Thrawn could discover what this art was and discern how it operated, he could learn something new about the rebellions' psyche and tactics.

Thrawn had lived through more pain than his teen captors could ever know. He would not fall for their amateur tricks. He would bear witness to their new art form, escape the Ghost crew's hold, and return to the Chimaera a wiser man.

As he thought that, Sabine queued up her holoprojector. The image on its main menu featured two Wookies staring longingly at each other. Behind them were the tall trees of Kashyyyk, decorated for a local holiday. When Sabine unmuted the sound, melodic Wookie growls could be heard 'singing' along to a soft ballad tune. After a few measures, Sabine joined the chorus with her own soft hums.

The door to the cargo hold slid open. "I'm back!"

Ezra plopped down on the same bench Thrawn's binders were tied to. As his hands were full of snack food and not weapons, he remained a safe distance away from Thrawn. Thrawn examined the popcorn silently, to which Ezra responded, "this is for us. Not you."

So the rebels required nourishment to withstand the coming torture session. Interesting. Perhaps food mitigated the holovideo's effects in some way. Thrawn would include this detail in his future report.

Sabine pressed play, then took her seat next to Ezra. The way the bench curved ensured that the pair had a good view of both the holovid and their captive. They also sat between Thrawn and the room's only door.

The soundtrack from the opening screen continued. Snow blanketed treetops dominated the opening of the holovideo. Thrawn found the nature shots to be middling in quality. Not well shot per se, but nothing to decry as torture just yet.

Slowly but surely, the nature shots gave way to a family of Wookies decorating their tree house for some form of holiday. The older Wookies growled back and forth with the younger Wookies in their native language. As Thrawn did not know how to speak the Wookie's native language, he could not be sure of the dialogue's contents. The longer the conversation between the Wookie family ran, the angrier their tone became. By the end of the scene, Thrawn believed he had witnessed an argument.

Ezra laughed. "Meegan is right, you know. They should have waited until after Life Day to break the news."

"The pair of you understand this language?"

Sabine laughed. "Not a word."

Hm. While it was confusing to watch a holovideo in a language no one in the room understood, Thrawn did not yet see how the activity could replace a torture session. Even without an understanding of the dialogue, he was familiar with the story conventions followed by nearly every holovideo produced in the Empire. He could easily predict the plot of this offering.

The next scene featured entirely new Wookie characters. They were in an office of some kind. No decorations could be seen inside or outside the room, so it was difficult to tell what time the second scene took place in relation to the first. Thrawn furrowed his brow.

The rest of the scenes followed the same lack of progressive logic as the first two. Eventually, one of the Wookies from the family scene met with the Wookie from the office scene at her family's house. The two embraced, then shouted at each other with bellowing growls. All the while, Sabine and Ezra cheered on one character or the other. It seemed they were wholly invested in a drama explained to none of them.

Thrawn thought holovid stories had to follow a story structure, one involving conflict. For the life of him, he could not figure out what the conflict was in this narrative. Every other scene broke from the story to display lavish holiday scenes or portray romantic tension between the leads, who stopped making out only to argue with one another. Trying to make sense of the images before Thrawn's was a maddening venture, one made no better by the fact that his captors faced no struggle in comprehension.

Why couldn't Thrawn understand what was going on in this holovideo? Why was he trying to? He could be using this time to loosen his bonds, yet the holovideo projected before his eyes… It puzzled him. A good puzzle was like a space siren's call, one that enthralled Thrawn at every opportunity.

The holovideo lasted just over an hour. By the end, the young male Wookie from the second scene and the young female Wookie from the first scene were celebrating their holiday in her family's house together. They had stopped arguing after reaching some unknown resolution to their mystery conflict. The song that had played in the beginning repeated at the end. Ezra and Sabine sang along, struggling to match their singing with the Wookie syllables.

Thrawn tried to put the clues together. What could the story be? Which scenes were extraneous indulgence and which moved the plot along? How could his captors be so perceptive as to understand the holovideo's contents when he himself did not?

As the end credits began to roll, Sabine stood up to turn the holovid player off. She turned the cargo hold lights back on as well. Once she was clearly visible again, Sabine challenged Thrawn, "if that story didn't move you, you have less of a heart than we thought."

Ezra faked a tear. "The triumph of love for Meegan and Carsahko. It's a Life Day miracle."

Thrawn shook his head. "This local holiday features miracles?"

Sabine stared at him, arms crossed. "Yes, it does. Maybe the Empire would know about Life Day magic if they hadn't decimated and enslaved the Wookie population. No wonder you can't appreciate their finest art."

Ah. This was the torture. Not the art itself, but the fact that Thrawn lacked the tools to understand it. The Empire's treatment of the Wookies had erased pieces of their culture from popular understanding. Now that the rebels had access to this "lost" knowledge, they could revive old tactics against an Empire no longer familiar with them.

Thrawn would not allow them to succeed. When he returned to the Empire, he would find every Wookie Life Day movie in existence and cross examine them against the rebellion's battle strategy. In trying to torture Thrawn, the rebels had revealed their hand to his all-seeing eye.

Before responding, Thrawn activated the tracker sewn into his sleeve. Once the Ghost left hyperspace, Thrawn's crew would be able to see where he was. He would be ready when Faro led the mission to rescue him.

To the rebels who had exposed themselves to him, Thrawn had only one response. "Your appreciation for other cultures is inherent in your artwork, Sabine Wren. If I can read your work, then this Wookie video will not hold onto its secrets much longer."

Sabine smirked. "Keep telling yourself that."

And he did. Three weeks and several dozen Life Day films later, Thrawn was the resident Wookie Life Day expert of the Seventh Fleet. Film by low budget film.


A/N's: Shout out to a friend of mine for inspiring this crack fic. Essentially, Ezra and Sabine subjected Thrawn to a SW Holiday Special meets the Hallmark Christmas movies. I get it's a little early for holiday-themed fics, but I just couldn't resist. Hope y'all enjoyed, and don't forget to leave a review below!