(A/N)- A little bit of maybe-supernatural, maybe-mundane creepiness this chapter.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Nope, I still don't own Star Wars.
Chapter 3
"Well, the fuel tank's punctured," Ezra announced, emerging from under the canted back corner of the Phantom II, which was sticking up awkwardly after their recent crash landing. "So even if the repulsorlifts did work we'd have no way to get forward momentum from the sublights."
Sabine kicked the dirt by her boot. "Great," she groaned. "Any luck with the transmitter?" she asked, coming a little closer, arms crossed.
"Got it beaming out on the usual emergency channel," Ezra confirmed, wiping the grease and fuel residue off his palms. "I got a ping back so it shouldn't be too long before Hera brings the Ghost around." He stepped back to stand at her side as they surveyed the damaged shuttle. "Any idea what that energy spike was yet?"
She shook her head. "Not yet," she admitted, glancing up at the boiling cloudcover. "It looked like lightning when it hit us but I didn't get anything off the scanners, no static, no meteorological pressure or atmospheric conditions that would indicate a thunderstorm." She raised a hand and shadowed her eyes, squinted up through the darkness at the clouds, rolling slowly overhead. They were puffy and almost pitch black in the waning daylight, but there were no rumbling flashes or sudden patches of light that would mean more lightning was moving through the atmosphere. "I'm almost tempted to say it was just bad luck."
Ezra glanced around, uneasily. "I'm almost inclined to agree. The Force feels... odd."
Sabine pulled her head down, looking to him in concern. "What do you mean?"
"It's..." Ezra struggled for a moment to find the right words. "It just feels funny, like it's moving in all the wrong ways around this place. There's this... age and decay and... something almost like malice."
"Dark Side?" she guessed, wrinkling her eyes.
He shook his head. "I dunno," he admitted. He glanced past her towards the craggly trees, growing grayer in the dimming light. "We should probably set up shelter. Not sure how long it's gonna take for Hera to get here, and I'd rather not get caught out in the open at night."
Sabine scanned around, turning slowly. She pointed off. "Well, those rocks look like pretty sturdy guards for our backs," she said.
Ezra agreed, and the two quickly split up tasks. Ezra wandered off to scout the immediate vicinity and Sabine began pulling supplies from the crashed shuttle, heaving herself over the tilted lip of the ramp and dropping down inside.
She pulled out the medkit, the emergency rations, and the spare blankets, piling as much as she could in her arms and making several trips. She checked on the transmitter on her last run, seeing it blinking on and off and quietly clicking.
She tapped out a quick coded message and sent it off. Then waited.
After a few seconds a confirmation came in reply. Sabine smiled, then hauled herself up one last time across the uneven uphill floor and clambered out of the shuttle.
-SWR-
Ezra wandered back a few moments later, as Sabine sat with her back against one of the tall freestanding rocks, sorting their supplies.
"So not much in the way of edibles," he reported. He set down their canteen and it sloshed thickly. "But I found a clean brook and plenty of dry timberwood."
"Last communication from Hera said ETA three to four hours," she told him, as he began to unload the sticks from his arms. "And we've got plenty of ration packs so we're not in danger of starving." She reached for a container in one of the piles. "You get any injuries in the crash?" she asked, snapping open the medkit.
He shook his head. "Couple bruises maybe. I'm fine, Sabine," he assured her.
Sabine nodded and shuffled through the contents of the medkit for the pain relievers. There was a nagging ache and stiffness in her neck, probably from the jolt of the landing, that was beginning to wear on her. She began to reach for the canteen, then paused briefly, squinting in the low light, at the odd smears of yellow she could see streaked across Ezra's jacket.
"You fall into my paints or something?" she asked.
"Huh?" He glanced down at himself and groaned when he saw the stains on his clothes. "Ah man... There was this field of weird-looking flowers I had to cross to get past a sheer cliff edge. Must've picked up some pollen," he grouched, furiously brushing himself off to try and rid his shirt of the dust.
Sabine shook her head, bemused, taking the canteen and popping it open so she could toss back the pills.
She passed Ezra a ration bar as she moved the tinder closer to her.
In a few moments she had a fire sparking brightly at their feet, and they chatted idly as night fell, and the cold crept in. Sabine shivered, the chill breeze biting through her jumpsuit with a lazy touch, annoying and persistent.
Something... unnerved her about this place. The Imperial facility they had been sent to scout out was mysteriously abandoned, dust already beginning to gather on surfaces. They hadn't seen sight nor sound of any people, not even bodies, and the logs from the computer were unhelpful and vague, mentioning only Stormtroopers feeling "bad vibes" and consistently pulling up no valuable ores or minerals from the cave they had begun to excavate. The last entry had been a clinical note about the project being scrubbed and that was it.
She'd expected to at least hear local wildlife as the sun dipped down and the moons rose but so far the night was equally, eerily, quiet. Just the snapping fire and the rustle of the wind and the empty echo of the air.
She distracted herself with telling Ezra a story about how she and Tristan had wandered up into the mountains one morning as children and gotten stuck up on a ledge, making their mother summon the guard to retrieve them.
"She was not happy about that one, lemme tell you," she finished.
Ezra chuckled. "Bet you both were in a heap of trouble," he teased.
"Tell me about it," she groaned. "She made us clean the entire welcome hall." She shuddered. "I still can't get the smell of that cleaner out of my nose," she quipped.
She expected a bray of his warm laughter, and was surprised when he was oddly quiet. She glanced at him, seeing him looking off into the trees with a distracted expression. He was calm, but very still, as if he didn't quite realize she was there.
"Hey," she called, waving a hand in front of his eyes "Lothal to Ezra, you there?"
It took a worrying moment for him to respond. He blinked, his eyes pinching slightly. "Sabine?" he called, his voice wavering with an odd note of confusion. He stared straight ahead into the shadowed trees. He inhaled slowly, carefully. "I feel weird," he told her.
Sabine frowned and set down the last third of her ration bar. "Weird how?" she asked, shifting around to face him.
"Like..." he began, then trailed off, his eyes going distant, hazy. He sat there a moment, his breathing strangely audible and labored.
Then, his eyes seemed to fixate on something in the darkness and he stiffened, a wide-eyed, frightened expression stealing over his features.
"No..." he breathed. He wrenched himself back suddenly, pressing against the rock behind him. "No, stay away!" he cried. "Stay away from me!"
Alarmed, Sabine looked to where his eyeline was, but could see nothing, nothing but the rotting trees and flickering shadows.
"Ezra?" Severely concerned now, Sabine shifted, rising up onto her knees and maneuvering around to face him. "What is it?"
He only seemed to grow more hysterical, his breaths short, his body shaking.
"It's coming..." he whispered, deliriously. "I can feel it."
Sabine felt panic starting to flicker at the base of her skull, but forced herself to think past it. "Ezra, what do you see?" she pressed, one hand straying to her utility belt to close around the hilt of her blaster.
"It's hungry..." he breathed, his voice strangled with terror. "Sabine it wants—" He hissed sharply, bolting to his feet, hands grabbing for his lightsaber. "Stay away!" he screeched at the unseen thing, green blade igniting and lighting up the night, sending her alarm skyrocketing. "I'm warning you!"
Sabine quickly scrambled to her feet, sweeping the treeline with her blaster, seeing and hearing nothing. Ezra had squashed his back firmly against one of the rocks, hyperventilating as he looked off to a point in the far distant darkness.
Her mind flashed through dozens of horrible possibilities. Was he having a vision? A mental break? Was something actually out there with them, that only he could sense and see?
She stowed her blaster back inside its holster, checking behind them one more time before grabbing hold of his shoulders, shaking him.
"There's nothing there!" she yelled. "Ezra!"
If he heard her he didn't show it, his eyes darting wildly about, lightsaber jerking in his hands. Sabine grabbed his wrists and forced him to lower his saber, pressing the switch to curl the emerald blade back up into the hilt, feeling his hands trembling. Her eyes spotted the pollen streaks still lingering on his sleeves and instinct screamed at her. Heart pounding, feeling a dread pooling in her stomach, she prized the lightsaber from Ezra's hands and reached for his wrist, scraping a sample of the yellow dust into her gauntlet scanner for analysis. She let the data crunch for a moment while she retrieved her helmet from the ground, shoving it over her head with force.
Ezra fell back against the rocks and whimpered, curling into himself with fearful terror.
"It's him..." he murmured, nonsensical, eyes twitching and darting around. "He's come for me..."
Sabine's HUD synced up with her scanner just in time for it to beep and display its results, and Sabine felt her heart dropping with dread.
The pollen... came her dull thought, as her helmet displayed a wireframe of the plant and listed the properties of its spores.
Microbes that were particularly aggressive towards those with Force Sensitivity. The listed symptoms?
Hallucinations.
Paranoia.
Asphyxiation.
Her heart tightened up on the last one.
Death.
Alarm blaring through her body now, she fumbled with the clip of the lightsaber hilt, hanging it from her own belt as she focused on Ezra. She seized his arms with a firm grip, trying to wrestle him into looking at her.
"Ezra! Ezra, listen to me," she instructed. She spoke seriously and firmly, burning determination moving through her. "Whatever you're seeing out there, it's not real. You hear me?"
He squeezed his eyes closed with a whimper and she felt him trembling. "I'm not crazy..." he mumbled. "I'm not, there's—there's something there, Sabine, I can feel it!"
"It's not—" she started, but then cut herself off as a dark chuckle seemed to echo through the trees behind her.
She whipped her head around, searching frantically, the shadows straining her vision, starting to blur into hideous shapes.
She let go of Ezra and stepped back with a groan, pressing her palms against her helmet.
Was the pollen affecting her too?
Can't dissolve... she thought, shaking her head. Someone's got to stay clear-headed. Okay. Okay okay. She inhaled slowly, pushing back the panic. She read back through the data on the plant, trying to formulate a plan.
"All right," she said aloud, crouching down and finding their medkit. "The spores trigger constriction and inflammation in the lungs which means I need..." She searched through the contents, shifting items around, shuffling. "Corticosteroids!" she declared, finding it. "And..." She rifled through their supplies, scattering them out of their neat piles. "Where is it?" she hissed. "Where—Ah!"
She grabbed up the little oxygen canister and rebreather. Scanning the supplies one last time she also picked out a hypospray.
"And a mild sedative to calm him down."
Feeling a bit more controlled now, she focused back on Ezra, who was heaving breath in and out, like it was a struggle for him.
Her heart wrenched a little at the sight. She rose up, gently taking his shoulder.
"All right Ezra," she started, guiding him down to sit. "I won't let whatever is out there get you," she promised. "But in the meantime I need to give you a couple things to help stabilize you. Okay?"
He shook in place with distant eyes for a long moment, the air moving through him sounding more and more strained.
Flustered, Sabine tried again.
"Ezra, can you hear me? That pollen you picked up is giving you a bad reaction. You're going to die if I can't stabilize you," she explained to him grimly. She held up the hypospray. "I have the medicine I need to give you, but I need you not to fight me on it. Okay?"
His unseeing eyes finally flicked down towards their feet. "Okay..." he mumbled. "Won't fight."
Relieved, Sabine knelt and ripped open the packet of oral corticosteroids. The two tan pills dropped into her palm, and she curled them into her fingers, also picking up the canteen.
She moved in, extending both hands.
"All right, Ez. Take these first."
He looked at the pills and canteen trepidatiously a moment before uncurling and grabbing the pills from her, rapidly tossing them into his mouth as if he didn't want time to decide otherwise, and washing them down with a long swig.
He wiped his mouth. "Okay..." he breathed. He handed her back the canteen with shaky hands, forcing himself to pry his legs away from his chest and stretch them out.
Sabine felt tension unwind from her shoulders. A faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth. "That should help with the inflammation. But you're still going to need oxygen until the spores break down." She wished she could let him see her face for this, so he wasn't staring into the black slits of her helmet, but she wasn't taking chances on inhaling that pollen. He didn't seem particularly bothered anyway, hadn't flinched away from her in fright as whatever hallucinogenic properties of the spores assuredly skewed his perception. She held up both the oxygen and the hypospray. "And I have a sedative which might help relax you a little. Which do you want first?" she asked.
As before, the question washed over him as if he hadn't heard it. His lips were moving and Sabine caught snatches of a nonsensical mumble.
"Moves in the dark, strikes like light, watching, always watching it never sleeps, shadows, shadows—" His face pinched tightly and he shook his head, his hands raising and digging into his temples. "What?" he asked.
"Sedative or oxygen, Ezra," Sabine repeated patiently, wishing she had a medical scanner.
He thought for a moment, his eyes unclouding and focusing on her. "Sedative," he decided. "I don't—It's—It's hovering, Sabine."
"I know," she told him, prepping the hypospray. "Pull down your collar."
He dropped a hand and tugged it away from his neck, and let her place the end of the hypospray there and depress it quickly.
He shuddered, exhaling deeply, and Sabine saw him untense, his shoulders dropping away from his neck. She passed him the oxygen, pressing the clear rubbery rebreather part to his face and guiding his hands up to hold it in place.
For several minutes she sat back and watched him, checking his pulse and breathing every so often. He had been paling when the worst of it had hit him, but he seemed to be regaining color now. She hoped she'd done enough, that she'd staved off the spore's effects long enough to keep him breathing until Hera got there with the Ghost. There wasn't much she could do for whatever he thought he was seeing—their limited medkit didn't have any kind of psychotropic drugs—but at least he was out of immediate physical danger.
Ezra's head drooped sleepily. He caught himself and startled up, dropping the mask from his face.
"Can I have my lightsaber back?"
"No," Sabine said, short and tersely. "And keep that rebreather on."
He whined in protest, but obeyed, curling back up.
A bit guiltily, Sabine shifted closer to him. "I won't let it get you," she promised. "I'll stay right here."
He nodded mutely, his eyes squeezed closed.
-SWR-
Sabine wasn't sure how long they sat there, the campfire waning at their feet, slowly turning into embers. It couldn't have been more than two hours, the night deepening, the wind pressing in with a cold chill. Ezra started having trouble breathing again and Sabine had to frantically tear into another small packet of cortiosteriods to stabilize him, nerves on a wire's edge as she desperately tried to keep him alive.
Hera, where are you? she wondered more than once, scanning the sky with worried eyes.
The fire died down. She didn't dare leave him to get more fuel, only shifting closer to him and wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Her helmet was beginning to feel hot and stifling. Sleep was tugging at the corners of her mind but she wouldn't let herself nod off, not until they were safe, not until she knew he was going to be okay.
Ezra was whispering again. Sabine tuned out his delirious rambling about voids and darkness and concentrated on the red embers still clinging to life in their firepit.
A cold wind blew on them.
Ezra suddenly gasped, shoving back against the rocks, his hands tight around the rebreather. "No!" he cried. "Go away!"
Sabine intoned wearily, "I'm between it and you, Ezra, I promise. It's not going to—"
A hissing laughter sounded in her ears, feeling like it was pressing against her skull. She startled to attention, facing the darkness beyond the campfire, searching.
She didn't see anything at first but... the shadows between the gaunt trees didn't... look quite right.
Ezra whimpered and squashed himself against their rock shelter. "Always remember I am nothing..." he muttered. "I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me..."
The laughter came again, cruel and clearly audible to Sabine's ears, even through her helmet. She spotted something like a leering face looming from the shadows and didn't know or care if it was her own madness from the spores or if it was something actually there.
She lurched up to her feet, grabbing for the first thing on her belt. Ezra's saber ignited in a flash of green and she swung it threateningly, positioning herself between the thing and Ezra.
"Get back!" she shouted at the vague eyes and teeth she thought she could make out. "You leave him alone!"
The thing, whatever it was, seemed amused by her posturing, staying where it was and grinning creepily. Sabine was about ready to pull her blaster and start firing wild shots into the treeline but just at that moment a stark white light blinked on and spotlighted them from above.
Sabine couldn't even express her relief as the light resolved into the Ghost's forward illuminators, piercing through the dark night and sending the whatever-it-was skittering back, lost to sight among the trees.
Sabine turned off the lightsaber and waved her arm with a frantic motion, tears beginning to stream down her face.
-SWR-
She stepped up to Kanan, nervous fingers pinching together, and joined him at the observation window.
"How's he doing?" she asked anxiously.
Kanan gave a smile, turning his face towards her. "Medics say he'll be okay," he told her. "Thanks to you."
Sabine dropped her eyes, biting her lip. Relief and worry and elation pinged through her, a confusing, dizzying mess that she couldn't make sense of. "Do you think something was really out there?" she asked, fidgeting nervously. "I know the spores don't affect non-Force Sensitives as much but I really thought I could see something out there," she confessed.
Kanan sobered, his frown all the confirmation she needed. "There were..." he began slowly, "...legends at the Temple about wraith-like entities that preyed on Jedi," he said. "They would hang around abandoned temples, or old battlefields, places where some great calamity had happened, and wait for the chance to strike. Their presence would make even the wildlife grow... sickly."
Sabine looked across at him. "The pollen?" she queried.
He nodded. "The creche-masters used to warn us the very soil could grow poisonous if one of them was around," he relayed soberly. "I don't know if I believed it back then."
She shuddered. "Okay... So we're obviously writing that whole planet off as 'Deathtrap for Force Sensitives'."
The Jedi chuckled, reaching to wrap an arm around her shoulders, rubbing her arm and hugging her to his side. "You did good, Sabine," he told her. "Thanks for protecting him."
Sabine ducked her chin, a bit shyly and bashfully, warming at the praise.