The thing about snow was that it was always quiet. Even if the world was ending or armageddon arrived with flaming chariots and muscled angels, the snow would ensure that everything would be as silent as Christmas morning.
So Kanan wasn't quite sure he wanted to get up after the ship crashed into the ice moon that neither he nor his scanners knew the name of. It was so rare that he ever got a moment of peace and quiet to himself. Hera was always filling him in on some new aspect of the mission- not that he minded, of course. Or Zeb was strangling Ezra, or Ezra was complaining about being strangled. Or Chopper was beeping in that pay-attention-to-me way he had perfected over the years. It was never actually quiet aboard the Ghost. Would it really hurt anything if Kanan took a couple moments to himself and just enjoyed it?
It wasn't like Sabine couldn't fix it. She was always complaining about never being able to practice her mechanic's skills anymore. Just the other day, she was whining to Hera about how the Ghost was always in pristine condition, and how she never got to fix anything anymore, and then she'd given Chopper a look, and he'd rolled around the room screeching like she'd tried to rewire him right there in front of everyone.
Well here was her grand opportunity. Too bad she couldn't practice while they were still in the sky, or after they landed on Nal Hutta, with all of Hondo's merchandise onboard.
Wait a second.
"Sabine!" Kanan sat up so fast he slammed his head into the control panel that had come unanchored during the crash.
"Calm down," she chided, appearing next to him. She stood over him, apparently uninjured except for a cut above her right eye. Kanan could swear she was laughing at him, but he didn't say anything about it. "I'm fine. You, however," she continued, "smacked your head into the console pretty good. You've been out for a while."
"I wasn't out," Kanan argued, rubbing his forehead. His hands came away dry; he wasn't bleeding, then. "I was enjoying the silence."
"Sure you were," Sabine said. Then, "Do you have any idea where we are? The computers are down." She flicked at the console.
Kanan sat up again, this time with much more care to avoid hitting his head on anything. Despite his protests, his head did hurt. A lot. He wanted to avoid hitting it again if he could help it. "No idea. Some ice moon in the vicinity of Nal Hutta, but I couldn't tell you which planet specifically."
"That's helpful." Sabine climbed over a piece of the ship that had fallen in the crash and pried open the door.
Immediately a blast of cold wind hit them in the face.
"Karabast, that's cold!" Kanan exclaimed. He reached out with the Force and slammed the door shut as tight as it would go on its warped hinges.
Kanan stood from the passenger seat and took in his circumstances. The ship had landed upright, thankfully, but it was at a bit of an angle- like they had landed in a ditch or a crevice of some kind. The wind from outside was already seeping in through the cracks. Sparks shot out of frayed wires intermittently and Kanan shivered.
Overall, he supposed, it could be much worse. But that thought didn't necessarily make him feel better.
"Do we have emergency supplies on this crap pile?" Sabine asked. It was a borrowed ship, one obtained from one of Hera's friends specifically for this mission. And it was no wonder they were allowed to use it for free; it was falling apart at the seams. Pieces of it were falling off even before they crashed and the hyperdrive only worked because she had spent the better part of the previous day fighting with it. Even the controls were outdated and in need of repair.
She pulled on the latch for one of the holds and yanked the door wide. The hinges let out a massive whine, but there was nothing inside.
Kanan reached for another hold and came up empty as well. "There's gotta be something in here," he muttered, mostly to himself.
Sabine disappeared into the rear of the ship. Not that there was much ship to disappear into. The whole ship was smaller than the Phantom, with barely enough space for the two of them and the cargo they were supposed to be bringing to Hondo.
"Jackpot!" she exclaimed a moment later, after another set of hinges whined terribly and a string of curses left her mouth. Kanan could only shake his head; where had she picked up that kind of language?
"What did you find?" he asked, following her to the back of the ship. He considered the ground in front of him. It was mostly clear, with only a few wires spitting sparks into the air to get in his way.
"Hera must have packed this for us," Sabine said. She was kneeling in one of the smaller cargo holds and rifling through what appeared to be a stash of emergency supplies. One-size-fits-all winter jackets, ration packs that may or may not have dated back to the beginning of the Clone Wars, a canteen of water, and a pile of blankets were all crammed tightly inside. Sabine tossed them to the floor of the ship.
Kanan picked up one of the coats and donned it, handing the other to Sabine. She stood from her crouch and held it out in front of her.
One eyebrow disappeared behind her hair.
"Is this supposed to fit me?" she asked, sizing it up. It looked to be about twice as big as she was.
"Probably not," Kanan said, ducking under a low-hanging part of the ship on his way outside. "But at least you won't freeze to death."
Sabine rolled her eyes but tied the winter coat tight around her waist. It hung past her knees, the sleeves dangling over the ends of her fingertips. She tried to roll the sleeves but they unraveled and flopped back down around her arms. Frustrated, Sabine gave up and stalked away outside.
Kanan was standing just outside the ship, taking in their surroundings. He reached out with the Force, wincing as the cold wind whipped at his exposed face.
"Out of all the places we could have landed, why did we have to land here?" Sabine pulled her coat tighter around herself.
"You're the one that landed the ship," Kanan reminded her.
"You're the one that lost control of it."
Kanan opened his mouth to retort but thought better of it. Instead he said, "We've gotta find shelter for the night. We'll freeze to death if we don't."
"The ship's no good," Sabine said, turning around to size it up. As if to prove her point, several sparks shot out of where one of the panels had come loose. "I wouldn't trust it until I fix it."
"We don't have time for that tonight," Kanan said. He started off towards what he could only imagine was more ice and snow. "There's got to be something else out here."
"I hope so," Sabine said, her teeth already chattering. Even with the heavy winter coat, she wasn't going to keep warm for long.
Kanan reached out with the Force over the barren land before them. "There!" he said, a moment later, pointing in the direction of the setting sun. "There's a cave about two klicks that way."
"We should be warm enough in there for the night," Sabine said. She turned on her heel and jumped on top of the downed ship. It groaned and shifted under her weight, sliding a few centimeters down the slope it landed on and sending Sabine sprawling to her knees with a short cry.
"Careful," Kanan muttered under his breath. "We don't have medical supplies out here."
Sabine clamored to her feet and tried her best to locate the mouth of the cave Kanan had seen through the Force. She lifted her macrobinoculars to her face and peered through them. The lenses sparked with static and she smacked herself on the side of the head. That seemed to do the trick. "I think I see it," she called to Kanan. "It looks safe enough, but I can't tell too much from this distance." She jumped down from the top of the ship. "We'll have to get closer."
They slipped back into the ship, careful to avoid the hissing wires and the pieces of the frame that had taken the most damage and were sticking up at odd angles.
Kanan pulled a backpack out from under his seat and they began packing the emergency supplies into it. Halfway through, Kanan paused, his hands on his knees. He was breathing heavily.
"You okay?" Sabine asked, an eyebrow quirked and something like concern in her voice.
Kanan spent several moments catching his breath before he responded. "The atmosphere, it's thin."
"I noticed that," Sabine said, narrowing her eyes at the air around her as if it were toxic instead of just thinner than what they were used to. "Will it be okay?"
"Hope so," Kanan said, standing up and resuming packing. He snapped the backpack closed and slung it over his shoulder. "But we better get going. Don't know what's out here at night."
In response, Sabine reached out and grabbed the flashlight off of Kanan's belt. He shot her a look from behind his visor.
"It's not like you need it."
Kanan and Sabine slipped away into the dusk. The sky was smoky green, fading with bits of light here and there behind a cloudy horizon. It looked like it might snow any moment.
"Think Hera's freaking out yet?" Sabine asked.
"Why would she?" Kanan asked, even as he knew the answer to the question. Their communications had gone down with the ship and he hadn't radioed her in too long already. It was going to be a long night for the both of them. He could only imagine Hera bossing the boys around, whispering to Chopper about how nervous she was, punching buttons on the Ghost as if doing so would make them magically reappear.
He hated to worry her, of course, but all the same, it was nice to be missed.
The pair made good time trekking across the snowy moon, even as they stopped a few times to catch their breath against the thin atmosphere. It wasn't long before they reached the mouth of the cave.
Kanan ducked his head in first, reaching out with the Force. "I think this will work."
"I hope so," Sabine said, kicking a mound of snow out of her way. "Otherwise we just walked all the way over here for nothing."
Kanan dropped the backpack on the ground and ignited his lightsaber. "Have a look around," he said, and though he didn't mean for it to happen, his voice came out just a little bitter.
The cave was fairly large and made out of porous rock covered in a thick layer of ice. The ground was all ice and snow and what seemed like green mud frozen beneath it all. Sabine wondered vaguely if it ever thawed out enough to get to it. They had settled down fairly close to the entrance- not so close that the bitterly cold wind could reach them, but not so far into the cave that they couldn't see the rising of the sun in the morning, whenever that came.
"Do you know how long nighttime lasts here?"
Kanan deactivated his lightsaber and clipped it to his belt. "Not a clue."
"Great." She reached into Kanan's bag for a ration pack, feeling her way in the sudden darkness, and peeled it open. She squatted low against an outcropping of rock to eat.
"Toss one here," Kanan said, and she threw one in the general direction of his voice. He snatched it out of the air, ripped it open, and the two of them chewed together in silence.
"I'll never understand how you do that," she said.
"It's the Force," he responded between bites. "You know that."
"Knowing something isn't the same as understanding it."
Kanan sighed as he took another bite of his meal. These were definitely outdated. "It's like, when someone is watching you, and you get that spooky feeling?"
"Yeah?" Sabine took a drink from the canteen.
"Well, there isn't anything actually on you to tell you that someone's watching. You don't make contact with their eyes, they don't cause you pain. But it's a feeling that something is there." He rubbed his face with his hand. This wasn't the easiest thing in the world to explain. "It's kind of like that. I can sense things, feel where they are, know their energy even though it's not as exact as being able to see them."
Sabine didn't say anything. She just crumpled up the garbage from her food and shoved it in Kanan's backpack. She stole another drink from the canteen.
Kanan stood from where he sat on the floor of the cave. ""I need some time to myself for a bit," he said. "Don't go outside, and don't fall asleep." He fixed her with a pointed glare she couldn't see for more reasons than it was pitch black in the cave. "I'll need your help getting out of here."
