Chapter 15

Sabine POV

Sabine sat aboard the Absolution in the co-pilot's chair, spinning around in the rotating seat as Ezra lifted them into the air. The ship aimed up towards the sky, lowering its raised wings to its sides, then launched forwards and flew into space.

Turning the ship towards a hyperspace lane, Ezra began to input coordinates on the navicomputer and said, "Alright, direct flight from Atollon to Krownest should take just a little while, much shorter without having to fit a trip to Beyrov in."

Sabine stopped spinning to look at him and ask, "We're going to Krownest? Is that where the war preparations are focused?"

Ezra looked at her, seeming confused, and said, "Well… we don't really have any organized efforts yet. The past couple months, I've just been quietly preparing my clan for the coming fight. Building up our arsenal, making sure everyone's staying well-trained. Stuff like that."

Now it was Sabine's turn to look at him in confusion. "Your clan? Not the other clans?" she asked.

"Well, I can't really just go anywhere anymore, not with Gar Saxon hunting me," Ezra defended himself.

Sabine frowned at him. "You mean that you've been on Kalevala the entire time? Why hasn't Saxon checked there?"

"Well, for one, they're supposed to hate me more than any of the other clans, so he expects that that's the last place I would go," Ezra explained. "But even more than that, he isn't really welcome on Kalevala. The Empire has a deal in place with my clan, that as long as we stay on our planet, they won't bother us. They're really just waiting for us to inevitably turn on each other from sheer boredom, but they don't care how long that takes as long as they don't have to deal with us."

Sabine leaned over to him and asked, "Why would your clan hate you?"

Ezra seemed to realize that he'd let something slip and turned away from her, saying, "Not important."

But Sabine wasn't going to make it that easy for him. Grabbing his shoulder and pulling him around to face her again, Sabine said, "No, Ezra! I want to know what you mean! Every time I try to talk to you about your life, you change the subject!"

Ezra rolled his eyes but avoided looking at her. "There's nothing to know about me," he said.

"Somehow I doubt that," Sabine responded.

Ezra still wouldn't look at her. Sabine huffed angrily and reached towards the navicomputer herself, inputting new coordinates. "If the war effort is currently on Kalevala, then that's where we're going," she said.

Ezra reached towards the controls, clearly intending to change their destination, and said, "Hey, wait just-"

Sabine cut him off with a glare, and he raised his hands in surrender, allowing Sabine to push the lever forward and launch them into hyperspace.

As they flew, Sabine had an idea. "Alright, how about this?" she said. "You can ask me anything about myself, and then you can tell me something about you."

Ezra leaned back in his chair and said, "I already know everything about you."

Sabine smirked at him and began, "Not a chance, Kryze. I can-"

"Sabine Wren," Ezra cut her off without looking at her, sounding like he was reading off a holopad. "Born nineteen years ago to Alrich and Ursa Wren. Older sister of Tristan Wren, age seventeen. Heir to the throne of Clan Wren, House Vizsla. Determined to be a genius at the age of three. Created her first art masterpiece at the age of seven, which still hangs in the Imperial Art Gallery on Coruscant, and her second masterpiece less than a year later, which hung in the Main Square of Sundari for over five years before it was acquired as part of Imperial Admiral Thrawn's collection, which has since acquired over a dozen additional pieces of her work.

"Top student in the Imperial Academy on Mandalore at the age of ten, then two years later, destroyed the Academy during an escape with her close friend, Ketsu Onyo, who later joined the Black Sun crime syndicate and acquired a ship registered as the Shadow Caster. Meanwhile, Wren herself joined a group of rebels that operated primarily on the planet of Lothal for some time, known as the Spectres, comprised of five members. Wren's designation as part of this insurgent group is Spectre-5. Expert with explosives, hand-to-hand combat, aviation, navigation, acrobatics, computational systems. Received royal Mandalorian training with every manner of known weapon. Speaks more than half a dozen languages."

Sabine remained silent for a long moment at the end of all this, her eyes wide in shock. Finally, she managed to stutter out, "How did you… I didn't…"

"I read your Imperial file many times over seven years, going back over every single detail repeatedly every time you added something else to the list," Ezra explained. "I visited every crime scene and questioned every single person I could find that had ever known or even spoken to you."

Sabine stayed quiet for a moment longer, then said, "I'm not sure if I feel flattered or creeped out by that. But anyway, you've only proven my point that I need to get to know you."

Ezra managed to hold out a little longer, but then Sabine looked at him with her large, pleading brown eyes, and he sighed in defeat. Looking at their ETA, he told her, "You can ask one question. For now. What do you want to know?"

Sabine mentally cheered at her success. And she already knew what question she wanted answered first. "You seem to know everything about my family," she started, then sympathetically added, "I heard you tell Maul that he killed your mother."

Ezra's eyes fell for a moment, but then he refocused on the path ahead of them and simply said, "Yes. He did."

"I didn't know," Sabine admitted, placing a consoling hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, and I don't want to bring up any bad memories, but I just want to know, what was she like?"

Ezra remained silent for a moment, then said, "I never really knew her. She was killed when I was only two years old."

Sabine opened her mouth to express further condolences, but then frowned in confusion. "I thought she gave you your jaig eyes when you were eight."

"That… is where my story gets complicated," Ezra said, lowering his head with a sigh. "You see… I'm adopted. Since my real mother was killed, my aunt has taken care of me. I consider her my mother, the only one I really remember ever having."

Sabine frowned in confusion. "Your aunt?"

"Bo-Katan Kryze, Lady of Clan Kryze," Ezra explained. "My mother was the Duchess Satine Kryze. You may have noticed that Maul had a picture of her as part of his shrine."

Sabine nodded in understanding and asked, "And… your father?"

Ezra scowled. "He is unimportant, but I'll tell you that he wasn't even Mandalorian, nor was he ever married to my mother. He never even knew that I was born. But I've answered your question. For now, please, just leave it at that."

Sabine wanted to know more, but she could tell that Ezra was distressed, so she gave in. "Alright. Thank you for sharing with me," she told him sincerely.

Ezra looked back over at her gratefully, then the console in front of them beeped in warning, and Ezra pulled back on the lever to drop them out of lightspeed above Kalevala. Sabine took a long look at Ezra's home planet as they approached, never having visited the planets of the other clans before. Large parts of the planet were covered in grassy plains and rocky terrain. The rest of the planet was covered in enormous bodies of water.

"Your home is beautiful," Sabine commented.

Ezra nodded in agreement. "Looking at it like this, you would never dream that it's home to dozens of warriors."

Sabine was in total agreement. The place looked so peaceful, yet as they flew down towards the jagged cliffs, she could also easily imagine this land being used as a battlefield. If she looked at the terrain closely, she could even see old craters and blaster marks from when past Mandalorians had fought or trained on this planet.

Ezra flew them over one last cliff before she got her first look at his home. Each Mandalorian clan had a fortress of some sort on their own planet that served as their base of operations. While Clan Wren had a stronghold, Clan Kryze had a castle. It was all smooth, gray stone, and it sat strategically placed atop a tall cliff overlooking the ocean, but with another cliff face close to their back, which had several dozen Kom'rk Gauntlets sitting on the grass at the top. This setup was clearly intended to give them the high ground while also maintaining a defense from a surprise attack from behind. Any attacker would have to attack the castle from the front and face the full power of Clan Kryze's fleet of starships before they could do any damage to the fortress.

Ezra brought the Absolution in to land next to the other Kom'rks on the cliff, then turned to Sabine as they touched down and both of them stood up. "Just… don't let them intimidate you. Especially my mother," he warned.

Sabine put her helmet on her head at the same time as Ezra and responded, "I'm a Mandalorian too, Ez. I don't intimidate easily."

"You haven't met my mother," he said seriously.

"And you've met mine," Sabine shot back as she leaned down to pick up a large bag full of her belongings, and Ezra grabbed another.

Ezra remained silent for a moment, then nodded. "Touche. But your mother learned it from mine, and mine is a bit more… subtle about it. She's just as serious as yours, but she won't let you know it until it's too late."

They walked to the ramp, which lowered beneath their feet, and Sabine joked, "I'll keep my guard up. I assume I shouldn't look her in the eye either?"

"No, you should," Ezra quickly warned as they exited the ship. "If you don't, she'll consider it weakness. And she can smell your fear too. And she knows everything."

Sabine laughed as they crossed the clearing, noticing several dozen Mandalorians in blue and gray armor looking their way. No doubt their eyes were drawn to the unusual sight of both Ezra and Sabine's armor's bright colors, but Sabine barely even registered their discomfort. Even in an unfamiliar and potentially hostile place like this, Sabine felt comforted by Ezra walking next to her, his solid, reliable, confident nature somehow keeping her from feeling like she even had to keep an eye out for any threats.

Ezra walked by her as they approached a pile of crates, next to which stood a droid and a woman in armor, who was scrolling through the contents of a datapad in her hand. As Ezra approached her, he called out, "Mom! I want to introduce you to someone!"

The woman, clearly Bo-Katan Kryze, turned around at the sound of his voice and smiled. Bo had green eyes and red hair, and her smile when she saw Ezra was so sincere that Sabine could immediately tell that Ezra hadn't been joking about it being hard to tell how truly stern she could be.

Bo's eyes then shifted to Sabine and immediately scanned her over, clearly intrigued by her armor, and Sabine could almost see the woman comparing Sabine's armor to Ezra's, making connections, the gears turning in her mind. Then, Bo's gaze fell down to Sabine's belt to examine her weapons, and her smile suddenly fell as her face became pale.

"You have the Darksaber," Bo noted with a mixture of awe and horror.

Even though she had said it quietly, every Mandalorian present looked up at the mention of the weapon, stopping whatever they were doing to look towards the scene. Ezra looked over at the Darksaber hilt on Sabine's belt himself before he looked back to his mother and sighed, "Good to see you too, Mom. Yes, she has the Darksaber. I'm sorry. I meant to tell her to leave it on the ship."

"Ezra," Bo said slowly. "How did… Did she defeat… What-"

"Listen, it's a long story that I will explain later!" Ezra cut her off, then turned to address the other Mandalorians. "Nothing to see here! We will discuss this later!"

Slowly, the other Mandalorians began to break away and go back to what they were doing previously. Sabine was grateful. She hadn't expected the Darksaber to make her the center of attention in this way, but clearly it meant a lot to Ezra's clan. Perhaps an abnormal amount even, more than even the other clans. When Bo had first seen it, she had not only been surprised, she had seemed panicked. And Ezra had apologized for bringing it forward. All that added to Ezra's adamant refusal to wield the blade back on Atollon, Sabine figured that there was more to the story than she knew.

After everyone had returned to their work, Bo faced Sabine and tried to give her a smile, though it didn't come off as being entirely genuine. "Judging from your armor, I assume that you must be Sabine Wren," Bo said with forced cheerfulness. "My son has… told me about you."

Sabine removed her helmet and bowed to her. "Lady Kryze. It is an honor to meet you."

Bo looked her over with a glare, almost as one would an enemy, and said, "Well… you seem to be a very polite, pretty young woman. What brings you to Kalevala?"

Already feeling somewhat uncomfortable, Sabine gave Ezra a nervous glance and answered," Er, I was told that you're preparing for war, so I'm here to help."

Bo turned to Ezra and raised an eyebrow. "A war, you say? Is that what you've been doing, Ezra?"

Ezra seemed to tense up and tried to wave it off, "Who, me? Preparing for war? No, it's more just that I've been-"

Bo cut him off, pointing towards the castle, and said, "Go."

Ezra lowered his head and defeatedly said, "Yes, ma'am," then began to slowly walk towards the castle. Sabine gave one last nervous look at Lady Kryze before she followed after him.

As they walked to the castle, Ezra let out a deep sigh. "I guess I should've mentioned that they didn't know about my war," Ezra told her.

"Sorry," Sabine said apologetically.

Ezra remained silent for another moment, then said, "Ah, well. She would've found out sooner or later. She really does know everything that happens around here, at some point." He then turned to face Sabine and asked, "Do you have your jetpack?"

She held up her bags and said, "It's in here. Haven't finished painting it yet, though."

"Well, we can't have you flying around without a fully painted jetpack, can we?" he asked sarcastically, then turned and handed her her other bag.

Sabine frowned at it as she took it from him, and began to ask jokingly, "What, was it too heavy for-"

She stopped as Ezra suddenly stepped in front of her and wrapped his arms around her waist, then jumped into the air and Sabine could feel her feet leave the ground as Ezra's jetpack activated, flying them towards Kryze Castle at high speeds. Sabine held on tightly to the bags in her hands and wrapped her arms tightly around Ezra but remained silent as they flew, unable to even see where they were going without her helmet in the wind that rushed over them.

Finally, Ezra landed both of them on their feet on one of the stone pathways at the castle, then chuckled as he released her from his arms.

Sabine was still panting in shock from the sudden flight, then turned to glare at Ezra. "Next time… give me a warning first, will you?"

Ezra continued to grin at her and said, "As you wish, Miss Wren. But this was the fastest way for us to get over here, so I'm sure you understand. Also, you can let go at any time. We're on the ground now."

Sabine looked down to see that her arms were still tightly squeezed around Ezra, and she quickly released him and stepped back, subconsciously allowing Ezra to take one of the bags from her again, too distracted to insist that she could carry them herself.

The flight had been exhilarating, but also had felt absolutely terrifying to Sabine at first. Not because she had never used a jetpack before. She had used her own jetpack once after bringing it back from Concord Dawn, even with Saxon's colors still on it, just to get a feel for it.

No, what had been terrifying was Ezra just suddenly grabbing her in his arms and pulling her in close to him, making her heart soar before she could comprehend what was happening, before the rest of her body quickly followed. When they'd landed, she had been hesitant to release her hold on Ezra, feeling strangely comfortable in his arms after only being there for a few seconds.

It was an odd feeling, both liberating and terrifying, as Sabine processed these thoughts and suddenly realized, Oh, no. My mother was right. What if I… love him?

Ezra POV

As soon as they landed, Ezra had swiftly unwrapped his arms from around Sabine. For one, he wasn't sure how well she would take his little joke, quickly kidnapping her, but his instincts had gotten the better of him when she implied that she didn't want to use her own jetpack.

His clan always used their jetpacks to get from the landing field to the castle. It was too tedious not to. The terrain all around them was designed to be difficult (and in some cases, deadly) to traverse. Jetpacks enabled them to travel across that space quickly and efficiently, even though they were all trained on how to climb around the dangerous cliffs at childhood anyway, just in case.

And at first, it had been just a joke to give Sabine a surprise flight to their destination. But then, when he'd wrapped his arms around Sabine to launch the both of them into the air, he'd suddenly felt… weird. It was a mixture of joy and worry, happiness and fear, elation yet concern.

Of course, he always felt a bit odd whenever he was around Sabine, but this had been different. As they'd flown, he'd looked down at her head and found himself wanting to remove his helmet mid-flight to sniff her, wondering what she smelled like as he realized that he didn't really know. He'd mentally slapped himself to clear his head. Why would that instinct even enter his head? He'd never cared what anyone smelled like. Maybe it was the fumes of the paint in her hair, affecting his mind.

When they'd landed, he'd swiftly released her and tried to back away, trying to make his head calm down and clear up, but she had continued to hold on to him for a few more seconds, making the feelings only escalate. When she finally let go of him, his heart had fallen with a feeling of loss, and the strange tingling in the pit of his stomach hadn't decreased whatsoever.

He quickly grabbed one of her bags, wanting to keep himself busy to make sure that he wasn't broken, and led her into the castle.

He led her towards the head of the barracks, and brought her into one of the rooms with a single bed. "This will be your room during your stay here," Ezra told her as he set down the bag in his hand, but did not look at her, trying to avoid making his condition any worse. He would have to see the medical droid about it, whatever it was.

He layed out a blanket and pillow on the bed, then turned to exit, saying, "I need to get to… work, but please get yourself settled in. My room is right across from yours if you need anything. Dinner will be at 1800 hours, and while we're there I'll tell everyone to help you with whatever you may need."

As he walked out, he stopped in the doorway as he heard Sabine call after him, "Thank you!"

Looking over his shoulder to finally see her face, he responded, "Of course. Make yourself at home, Sabine Wren."

She beamed at him before she turned to begin unpacking her things, and the feeling in Ezra's stomach rose even more at the sight of her smile.

He exited the room, the door closing behind him, and Ezra immediately pulled off his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. "Whatever's going on with me, I'm in big trouble," he said to himself with worry.