(A/N)- WHEEEEEEEEE we've come to the end of the ship week my dears and this one was my favorite one to do. I'll not keep you from it, HERE'S THE IMPERIAL AU SABEZRA DRAMA.
This is one is ah... slightly more mature in content than the other chapters, if only because of the song picked. I promise, the actual chapter is not nearly as horny.
Also a warning for Seventh Sister being creepy. (It's Seventh, of course she's gonna be creepy.)
Disclaimer: Who do I need to kneecap to own Star Wars? Asking for a friend.
Day 5: AU/Free Day
Dangerous how we toe the line
Push it every time my my
Compromised from how you say my name
I see those bright blue eyes and I
Want you tied up in my bed
With my name carved deep into your chest
Harmless games went to my head
Now I want you breathing down my neck
-"Animal" by Jim Yosef and Riell
"Quit staring."
Sabine startled, a flush burning hot in her cheeks, and gripped her teeth as she shot a glare aside at Ketsu.
"I'm not staring," she insisted.
The words weren't even finished coming out of her mouth before her eyes were drawn again, magnetically, across the hanger, towards the cluster of Imperial figures standing at the base of the shuttle ramp.
Ketsu rolled her eyes. "You're staring at him and it's gonna get us into trouble," she hissed under her breath, pinching Sabine's elbow.
"I'm not staring at him!" Sabine hissed back.
"Then quit looking!" Kestu shook her head in frustration, pulling more insistently on Sabine's arm. "I swear, every time he comes to the Academy your brain just goes flying out into hyperspace."
Sabine batted off Ketsu's hands. "Cut it out!"
The two girls wrestled a moment or two before the stern voice of the lieutenant barked sharply at them.
"Ensigns!"
Sabine and Kestu quickly stood to attention, backs straight and chins stiff. Sabine fidgeted as the man stalked over, pacing in front of them with unamused eyes.
"Is there some kind of problem?" he demanded.
"No sir!" Ketsu answered at once. "Ensign Wren is just a little excited about our visitors, that's all," she added, deliberately sidling a smirk towards her friend.
Sabine glared but had to look forward again as her commanding officer sneered down at her.
"The Inquisitors are not to be troubled, Ensign," he told her. "They are not to be disturbed, nor discussed, nor even acknowledged, is that clear?"
"Yes sir!" Sabine replied at once.
The lieutenant stepped back, looking her over with a final warning glare, before moving stiffly away. His footsteps echoed across the hanger.
Sabine kept her head obediently down for several seconds as she waited for him to depart.
...And then she let her eyes drift across the hanger again, towards the human boy in the Inquisitor uniform who kept captivating her attention.
He was young, maybe her age. Close-cropped dark hair, tanned brown skin, and dazzling golden eyes that reminded her of warm amber.
She knew it was stupid to have a crush on a boy she'd never talked to, wasn't allowed to talk to... but every time the Inquisitors came by the Sundari Imperial Academy—for what, she couldn't say, they seemed to make a brief inspection of promising and talented incoming cadets and then vanish back wherever they came from—her heart gave a little flip at seeing him. Her pulse raced, her palms got clammy, it was so silly that just seeing him made her react this way.
She was a star orbiting a black hole, inexorably drawn in by his gravity.
He stood silently behind the older Inquisitor who appeared to be his handler, a humanoid female of unknown species. Sabine had never seen the woman take her helmet off, so it confused her a little why her human subordinate had been allowed to go unmasked.
But then with a face that pretty it would almost be a mortal sin, in Sabine's opinion, to cover it up. So she supposed she could relate.
The formalities appeared to be almost over; the head instructor was getting increasingly fidgety and was gesturing off towards the exit, trying to usher the Inquisitors into the academy to finish their business. Soon the handsome Inquisitor boy would fade into the shadows, drifting through hallways like a silent ghost, illusive and fleeting, and Sabine wouldn't see him again until they lined up again to see the shuttle off.
Her next exhale shuddered a little, a swell of nerves rising through her.
She wanted to talk to him. She needed to talk to him. She knew it was expressly forbidden, he wasn't even supposed to exist, per the official line the lieutenant had given them, over and over, but that just made the idea all the more enticing, stoked her curiosity to dangerous levels.
Things tended to explode when Sabine Wren got curious.
She just wanted to spark up against him, just once. Have a look in those beautiful gold eyes and see what was inside, what made the boy tick, what his chemical composition was.
As if sensing her intentions, he suddenly flicked eyes across the hanger to land on her.
Her breath caught and she stiffened and froze at once, mind blanking out. The blush was a full-on heat warming her whole face now, like their eye contact was scorching her from the inside. Her heart pounded and she wondered for a moment if you could die from being noticed.
She was almost too relieved when Ketsu fell into step behind the other ensigns, dismissed by their commander, and scrambled to compose herself through the storm of firecrackers going off inside her chest, turning to follow the line out the door.
She resisted the urge to peek back at him, still feeling the laser heat of his eyes watching her go. Her heart and head drummed with the knowledge.
He saw her.
He saw her.
-SWR-
The little brunette... pilot? Mechanic? Scientist? He never really kept track of the denizens of this place—was walking away now, following behind the others, the mortification still flowing off her like a steady wash of the tides.
Strange, but also slightly endearing. The girl acted like she had some kind of childish crush on him and was desperately trying to hide it. Cute. Weird, because out of all the possible beings in the galaxy who could be attracted to him, but... nice to think about. Maybe a little flattering?
"Eyes forward, apprentice," came the silken voice of his master in warning.
A shiver of fear jolting through him, the boy quickly faced forward again.
"Yes Master," he mumbled, burying the fanciful ideas under a layer of numb obedience.
The Seventh Sister tilted her head down at him—even after his growth spurt she still towered and loomed over him—and he could picture the look in her yellow eyes beneath the helmet, cold and calculating. "Remember, no distractions while we're here," she told him. The cadence of her voice slid lower, her gloved hand curling towards him. "I know how you like to wander off," she whispered, her fingers brushing up against him, drawing a line slowly up his back.
He fought not to shudder, his lips flattening, pressing together, his eyes squeezing closed. His throat clenched, chest squeezed like a fist was closing around his heart and he trembled and begged his troublesome mouth not to remind her that she was the one who often sent him away while she performed the inspections. "I don't want you to get jealous," she quipped, as if he could ever envy whatever unlucky Force Sensitive might become the new target of her attention, as if she wasn't casually threatening to replace him, dispose of him, as if the thought didn't both relieve and terrify him.
The hand creeping up his back stopped at his shoulder, squeezing with affection, and he shook with minute trembles. With a shock of cold dread he realized she was waiting for him to answer.
He unstuck his tongue, whispering thinly. "I won't go far, Master," he promised.
"I know you won't," she purred with a satisfaction that made him ill.
It burned him up that she could still affect him like this, make him small and terrified just with a word.
He exhaled shakily in relief as Seventh Sister withdrew, her touch lingering on his skin like an itch. All-business, she stalked towards the hanger door, after the babbling headmaster, whose nervousness was a prickly ring in the Force.
The boy was only too happy to fade into her silent shadow.
-SWR-
"No."
"Please, Ketsu?" Sabine begged, pushing in with wide watery eyes.
Kestu stepped back in turn, warding her off with waving hands. "No no no no no, I am not covering your ass this time, Wren," she insisted.
"I'll only be gone a few minutes!" Sabine said. "I saw where he went this time!" Backing off a bit, her pleading expression became a little more serious and genuine. "Look, I just wanna ask his name, maybe get a contact frequency. Something. It's gonna burn me up if I don't at least talk to him."
Ketsu wrinkled her face in disgust. "Ugh, your stupid crush is gonna get you expelled," she complained. "All right fine, I'll sign your ID into the lab and run interference with Dr. Falsco if he asks where you are."
Sabine beamed, and Ketsu almost didn't regret her decision. "Thanks Ketsu," she said. "I owe you one."
And with no further fanfare she was off, darting down the gray hallway.
"You'd better do more than just talk to him if you're gonna make this up to me," Ketsu grumbled, turning aside.
She shivered to herself. The Inquisitors gave her the creeps. Sure, the kid was pretty, but in the sense that a deep-sea Calamari angler squid was, all glowing tendrils and bright enticing colors until you got too close and out came the poison barbs striking out, sinking into fish flesh.
She hoped her friend knew what she was doing, but Sabine had never been one for caution, even before...
Well, she let that thought trail off.
She swiped both their ID cards into the access port and let the door hiss open.
Don't get stung, Little Sister, she admonished inside her head worriedly.
-SWR-
Sabine clasped her hands in front of her to keep them from shaking as she peeked in through the doorway.
He had hidden away in one of the training rooms currently not in use. They tested infantry recruits in these rooms, cadets enrolled in the Stormtrooper program, put them through the paces. Obstacles courses, timed runs, drone and droid opponent waves. Sabine had been through a couple courses herself, until they discovered her true talents lay in explosives and... unique weaponry. She was still allowed to come train here, but it was no longer a course requirement.
She watched him, marveling as he moved through one of the drone sequences, his glowing red lightsaber—an actual lightsaber, she thrilled with a giddy kind of excited rush—sweeping through the air, stabbing and slashing with elegant precision.
He moved like a fluid black liquid, fully in tune with his own body and the position of the drones. His blade moved in elaborate, confident patterns. It was like he could tell where the drones were going to be, where they were going to shoot, before they actually did. There was something supernatural about it, superhuman.
Was that why Imperial Command kept the Inquisitors such a secret? Sabine had heard the stories, just as any Mandalorian, about the Jedi Order of the old Republic, those in tune with something they called the Force, warriors on par with their own who had used their mystic tricks to win battles with Mandalore time and time again.
Looking at the Inquisitor now, she could believe it.
But there was something fiercer, sharper, harsher, about the way the boy handled his lightsaber, compared to the stories she'd heard. There was an anger in the line of his movements, something unsettled and tumultuous. He didn't sweep his saber with the serenity of a Jedi. It was something more feral, more predatory.
Dangerous.
She nearly gasped and revealed herself when a stray red bolt caught the boy in his shoulder. He hissed but shook off the hit the next instant, raising his hand towards the drone that had shot him, the last one in the sequence.
It froze in midair as if caught in a tractor beam. The boy's fingers tightened, curling into a fist and she watched in mixed fascination and horror as the drone's metal casing creaked and groaned and buckled in on itself, sparks bursting from popped circuits.
His hand loosened and the crushed, broken droid dropped to the floor.
Sabine released she was holding her breath, and let it out slowly, heart beating loud in her ears. The firecracker storm inside her chest was back, popping louder than ever, her fascination with the boy a burning itch under her sternum.
So beneath the boy's stoic and calm neutral exterior broiled something unstable.
She had always been interested in volatile compounds.
-SWR-
He panted hard, adrenaline ringing in his ears, slowly gaining back his breath. Sweat stuck the material of his Inquisitor uniform to him, hot and uncomfortable. His joints rang with the physical effort. His body ached.
Taking in a last inhale to compose and calm himself, he sent a stare back over his shoulder at the girl watching him.
She startled, nearly jumping out of her skin and starting to babble immediately.
"Sorry!" she blurted. "Sorry! I—I didn't mean to bother you I just wanted—I mean—I—"
She stepped nervously into the room—counterintuitive, he thought—apparently not sure what to do with her hands as she wrung them and pulled on her gloves. Despite her earlier open staring she seemed unable to look at him now, glancing towards the walls, the floor, the broken drones.
"I—I was hoping I could—That we could—"
"You're not supposed to talk to me," he interrupted.
Unexpectedly she huffed and rolled her eyes, like she'd heard that injunction a million times. "Yeah, I know," she groaned. "Don't talk to you, don't acknowledge you, don't ask questions, you aren't even here." She raised her face and her eyes were full of something unidentifiable. "They always tell us to just shut up and stay quiet and not ask questions." She fixed him with a look. "Don't you get sick of it? The lies and secrets?"
He blinked, surprised by her fervor. Warily, he studied her, trying to glean what she could possibly mean by her words. He sensed a great deal of impatience and restless energy inside her, and deeper underneath some kind of festering pain and anger.
A little bit intrigued, he turned more towards her, deactivating his lightsaber. A whisper in his head hissed urgently at him about how he shouldn't even be giving this girl any attention, shouldn't draw attention to himself, shouldn't make a scene, but he ignored it, for now.
"Yeah," he admitted quietly.
A moment of static tension passed, some unspoken kind of understanding moving between them.
Then the girl coughed and cleared her throat, averting her eyes with a blush.
"So uh..." she started hesitantly. "How... how long are you here for?"
He shrugged. "Usually not too long. My Master will be calling me up soon, actually. She doesn't like to waste time." The mere mention of her caused his breaths to hitch, caused tingles of panic to prickle up his limbs. He shouldn't be doing this, he shouldn't be talking to anyone, she would know, she would know—
She's not here, he reminded himself. She never concerned herself with where he went and what he did while she checked the recruits for Force Sensitives, it was the one time where he felt like he wasn't completely under her watch.
He composed himself, the panic twining back down.
The girl hadn't seemed to notice, shuffling on her feet. "When will you be back?" she asked anxiously.
"Who knows," he said, indifferent. "We only come when we get a report."
That seemed to disappoint her a bit, though he couldn't fathom why. "A report about... what?" she pressed, curiosity still burning in her eyes.
He hesitated for a moment. He shouldn't be telling her this. But if she really hated Imperial lies and secrets that much... if there was a sliver of a chance he could spare someone the fate that awaited them at the Inquisitorius...
He gave the girl a significant, portent look. "Cadets that are a little too good at everything. A little... weird," he emphasized, hoping she picked up the implications.
Perhaps she did; her eyes widened a little and she took a slow step back. "Oh..." she said, small-voiced.
She fell silent, didn't ask any more questions for a long moment, and the boy grew uncomfortable, keenly aware of the shrinking window of time left to him before his master would expect him back at her side.
"I should go," he muttered. He hooked the lightsaber to his belt, kicked aside broken drone bits as he headed for the exit.
"What's your name?" the girl blurted, when he was about three feet from passing her.
Startled, he looked up, shoulders tensing, guard up. He searched her face but could find no duplicity or malice, only genuine desire.
Still, he narrowed his eyes. "You don't need to know that," he snapped.
"Yeah but I want to," she insisted.
He stared her down, suspicious and wary. "Why?"
"Because I want to know what to call you!" she said, exasperated.
Her eyes were a pretty golden-brown color, he'd just noticed. She looked at him without fear, without a hint of the skittish apprehension normal Imperials usually had around him. Instead her face burned with questions. Her interest in him was strong, but unlike the Seventh Sister's it felt warm and innocent.
His heart clenched just slightly. Did she... really genuinely care about... him?
She can't, the negative voices in his head already started crowding to remind him. She doesn't even know you.
Well, he thought sardonically, there was one way to fix that.
"Thirteenth Brother," he found himself saying. He broke eye contact, feeling an odd tickle of heat in his face. "You can call me Thirteen," he mumbled.
She looked incredulous. "That can't be your real name," she said.
He didn't understand why she was so indignant. He shoved down the part of his mind that was screaming to tell her Ezra, it's Ezra, to reclaim just a tiny piece of what they'd taken from him, let at least someone know who he used to be. "Well it's all you're getting," he huffed instead. He shouldered past her. "Goodbye."
"Sabine!"
He stopped, turned, found himself eye to eye with her, not even a foot away. His breath hitched at the proximity, an odd nervous twinge running through him.
Her gold-brown eyes were soft. Her hands had stopped fidgeting, were finally still by her sides. "My name's Sabine. Sabine Wren," she told him.
She pulsed with vibrancy in the Force, colorful and sparkling. Yet there was something she was keeping tightly bottled, her casual mental shields stubborn and impenetrable. If he wanted to force it out, he could, and he felt like he might shatter her in the process. Expose that deep-seated hurt he could sense rippling right under the surface, hot and tumultuous.
Like a star on the verge of going supernova.
He stepped back, putting space and distance between them both physically and mentally.
"You should stay away from me, Sabine." He put ice into his words, lifting his chin with practiced haughtiness and superiority. "You'll live longer."
He stalked away without another word, feeling her presence fade behind him.
"What's that supposed to mean?!" she shouted after his back.
He couldn't help but give her a cheeky smirk over his shoulder, which was the wrong message, the exact opposite of the warning he wanted to give, but it made her face twist up all cute and flustered and he didn't have much other opportunity for genuine amusement in his life. So he just chuckled as he left, feeling like gravity was just a little bit lighter.
-SWR-
Ketsu didn't look up from her datapad as she heard the dormitory room door open.
She thumbed down a page. "Did you get it out of your system?" she asked Sabine by way of greeting.
"Nope," Sabine moaned miserably through her hands, pressed tightly over her face. She crossed over to her own bunk with a dejected slump in her steps. "Fact I think I made it worse," she confessed, flopping down onto the cot and burying her face in the mattress.
Kestu shook her head with a sigh. "What are we going to do with you, Sabine?" she said.
"Can you start by smothering me with that pillow?" she requested, pointing back.
The other girl laughed, and Sabine lifted her chin, clutching her own arms beneath the elbows, setting her head down to rest on them and stare towards the wall. The itch, that magnetic irresistible pull that tugged her towards that boy was scratching at her, consuming her waking mind. She couldn't explain it. She didn't want to explain it. She just wanted to fall into that feeling like she'd come alive again after months of darkness and let it breathe air into her lungs. She knew he felt it too. They were rocks sparking against tinder, waiting to ignite.
The tricklings of an idea started to snake through her head. She bit her lip, and let that thought grow and take shape.
Whatever she had to do, she would see him again.
And hopefully this—whatever it was—wouldn't blow up in her face.
(A/N)- Thank you all for reading!
