Sabine left Kanan sitting cross-legged on the icy floor, already deep into his meditation. She hoped he would reach some divine revelation, but she doubted it. The Force hadn't helped her any in her twenty-something years in this galaxy; it wasn't going to help her now.

What was going to help her was finding out where they were, what was in this cave that they could use, and forming a plan to get off this kriffing rock.

Sabine was restless; couldn't sit still. She looked beyond their camp into the darkness.

Kanan had said she couldn't leave the cave, but he never said she couldn't explore it. She reached for the flashlight on her belt and hit the switch.

It sputtered twice before flicking off.

She tried again, with the same results.

Sabine banged it against a rock, tried again, and then remembered: why would a blind Jedi keep his flashlight charged?

She threw it into a corner of the cave and smiled as it made a sound that echoed through her head, and- she was sure- Kanan's, too.

So instead she pressed her fingers into the wall of the cave behind her. As she walked deeper and deeper into the darkness, she allowed her fingers to be her guide.

The darkness was complete. Her feet shuffled forward, carefully avoiding pieces of the ground that might cause her to stumble. With every step, she kept her fingers trained on the wall of the cave, imagining its swirls, dips, crevices. In her mind, she drew a map between where she was and where Kanan sat, lost in thought. She did not want to get lost in here.

A low growl from somewhere in the darkness caught Sabine's attention and sent her heart to hammering. Immediately she flipped on the infrared sensors of her helmet, but static buzzed again before her eyes. This time a good smack to the side of her head did nothing to dislodge it. She tried again and winced as she hit the spot on her helmet that covered the cut above her eye.

"What?" she half-whispered, half-screeched. Sabine clawed at the damaged helmet and pulled it off her face. Nothing but more darkness sat before her eyes.

Another growl came from the darkness beyond. Quickly and quietly she dropped the useless helmet to the floor of the cave. Sabine pressed her back against the wall and inched closer. Whatever this creature was, she couldn't let it sneak up on Kanan while he was meditating. She didn't fully understand it- not even close- but she had seen him capable of ignoring an entire argument between Ezra and Zeb. She knew he was focused on something elsewhere.

Sabine krept closer, her heart beating faster and faster in her chest. She wished for her helmet, or for her comm so she could call Kanan, but she had neither. She only had herself, the beast- whatever it was- and the crippling, suffocating darkness.

Kanan, meanwhile, was at one with the Force. He couldn't really explain it any better than Sabine could, but at least he had experienced it. It was almost like he stepped out of his body, allowing for a more complete sense of understanding to take over. One could only grasp so much when he was tied to this galaxy.

Kanan hovered somewhere where he was doing his best to understand the balance between what he wanted to do and what he needed to do. Kanan wanted to curl up and go to sleep and wait for the sun to come up before he demanded that Sabine fix the ship's communications so he could call Hera to come pick them up. But he knew that wasn't what he needed to do.

Instead Kanan reached. He reached for peace, for guidance, for the strength to do what he needed to do even when he didn't want to do it. He reached for patience, because Sabine was already getting on his nerves and he'd only been with her for the better part of a single day.

And as Kanan reached, the Force drew him towards the people in his life. He thought about Hera, and he sent reassurance her way. He thought calmness and patience towards her- two things she would certainly be lacking by now. He thought about Ezra and Zeb and he tapped his bond with Ezra, but the boy was focused on something else and barely acknowledged the nudge through the Force.

And then Kanan reached through himself. He focused hard on expelling all of his anxieties about their situation. He asked the Force for calm.

And it would have delivered, if the presence of a huge and terrifying creature hadn't suddenly blinked into focus, as if thawing from a deep freeze. Sabine's Force signature, coming from somewhere much deeper in the cave than he anticipated, flickered with fear, and something else, too.

Jedi mediation wasn't something you could just snap out of, but Kanan did his very best. Sabine was in trouble and here he was asking the Force for the patience to deal with her. He jumped to his feet.

And immediately staggered and caught himself against the wall of the cave because both of his legs were completely asleep. Pins and needles shot from his hips to his toes and he bit his lip to keep from crying out even as he stumbled away from camp and into the cave.

He wasn't sure exactly what was down there with Sabine, but he knew it couldn't be good. He also knew she didn't have a flashlight, and he didn't need to see to know that it was very, very dark.

Sabine could hear the creature- because that's what it was- breathing now. It hadn't identified her as a threat just yet, but she knew it was only a moment before she was either that, or dinner.

She had to think. Sabine closed her eyes against the darkness and focused hard on shutting the hammering of her heart out of her ears.

Maybe the Force should have kicked in by now. She breathed deep, nearly choking on the cold, and reached for something beyond herself. She tried to remember how it felt to connect with the Darksaber, how the raw power flowed through her body, down through her fingertips, and into the hilt of the sword. That had been more than her. That had gone beyond her.

But here in the cave, she felt only the darkness. She thought about how heavy it felt on her shoulders, around her hair, even on her face. She realized the creature could see her, but she couldn't see it.

So she focused her mind carefully on the creature's breathing: thought about the way it inhaled and exhaled, how it shifted and expanded with each breath, how it seemed to be taking up the whole cave, and she estimated that it was three, or maybe even four times as big as she was.

Sabine pressed her back a little harder into the wall of the cave.

It was her turn to breathe deeply. As quietly as she could, she took a deep breath and smelled the dry, scaly skin of the creature. She smelled its desperation, and its hunger, and these were things she couldn't explain but somehow still knew. Like what Kanan told her about the Force, and knowing someone or something was there, but not knowing how you know.

Sabine krept closer.

Maybe this was how Kanan was able to see. Maybe the Force wasn't some other-worldly power, but simply a different way of seeing things.

But how did that explain his ability to jump on top of buildings, and control people's minds, and-

The beast growled again, and took a step closer to her. Sabine snapped out of her thoughts. If she stayed where she was, she'd be caught between the wall of the cave and the beast's hungry jaws. She had no weapon on her- none that would work against a creature of this size, anyway.

She had to risk it.

Sabine closed her eyes again, using the rest of her senses to see in the perfect darkness, as she took first one step, and another, and another, into the unknown space beyond the cave wall.

Her heart raced, slamming against her ribs, but she thought calming thoughts in the direction of the beast- thoughts about sleep and warmth and not about food, even as she felt her own stomach rumble under her armor. And while she may not have been able to use the Force to give the beast a sleep suggestion or launch it off a cliff to its certain demise, she thought it just might have been calming down.

She took another step into the darkness, bent into a crouch, her hands spread out before her, ready to run or attack- she hadn't quite made up her mind yet, when-

"Sabine!" Kanan's voice suddenly cut through the dark, and even though it was technically no more than a whisper, it startled the beast from its calmed state. It lunged in the direction of the voice, all at once fear and hunger and rage.

A lightsaber ignited in the darkness.

"Kanan, no!" she shouted.

But Kanan's heart was focused on the rescue he believed needed to happen. He raised his lightsaber as if using it like a flashlight, and Sabine would have had a quip about the uselessness of doing so if he hadn't stolen the chance to speak from her.

"Get behind me!" he exclaimed. He stepped forward, towards the beast, who was growing more and more disorientated from the light and angry from the assault and the sound.

"I had it under control," Sabine growled as her eyes adjusted to the light and she got her first look at the beast. It was taller than both her and Kanan by a lot. It was furry and ugly, and it was probably blue or black, but she couldn't tell for sure in the low light. It had an ugly, muzzled face, and it looked like a hunter. It had four, or maybe six, legs, but the two in front it used as arms to fight off the Jedi and his lightsaber.

"I'm sure you did," Kanan said, breathing heavily as he slashed at one of the offending arms. The beast roared, a sound that echoed off the walls of the cave and through each of their chests.

"I did!" I was just about to get away and you came in and ruined it!" Sabine's voice rose now in the twilight created by Kanan's lightsaber. Gone was her ability to see through her senses and her perception. All she understood now was the darkness and the faint glow of the Jedi weapon as it slashed through the cold and the dark.

She turned away from the battle, her eyes and ears ringing, and realized she was in the very middle of the cave, with no walls and no light to guide her.

Without warning the beast changed directions and charged at her.

"Sabine, look out!" Kanan shouted. He launched himself at the beast, finally making contact with his lightsaber and plunging it directly through its midsection.

The beast roared a roar that echoed deep through the cave, through their chests, and through the very darkness that surrounded them.

And in the pitch blackness that followed Kanan's lightsaber sinking into the beast's flesh, Sabine didn't see the ledge behind her. She didn't hear the chunk of ice the beast's claw pushed over the edge fall end-over-end through empty space, didn't feel the emptiness at her back.

She simply fell into it.