(A/N)- Sabezra Week is upon us again, and what with the spate of new shippers coming on board from watching the Ahsoka show (despite Filoni's best efforts) I'm looking forward to consuming all of y'all's content.
Most of my fics this year will contain at least some element of Fix-It material (because Ahsoka made some quite frankly baffling narrative decisions) even though only one of the prompts is called "Fix-It", lol.
Namely! Sabine is not a Jedi (because she's not Force Sensitive) and the Wrens live. Also she and Ezra went home together in the finale, none of this Uno-reverse stuff. So yeah, I will be writing the fics from that lens. I hope you all enjoy!
Disclaimer: Hey, can you tell from my vague salting that I think the Ahsoka show would have gone so much better if I owned Star Wars? I can fix it just lemme have the characters, lemme have 'em, let meeeeeeeeeeeeee. *cries*
Day 1: In-Between
Mary belongs to the words of a song
I try to be strong for her, try not to be wrong for her
But she will not wait for me anymore, anymore
Why did I say all those things before I was sure?
-"Gifts and Curses" by Yellowcard
He collapsed immediately the moment the purrgil dropped from hyperspace.
Ezra lay there floating—not quite unconscious, but definitely not lucid—for several minutes, unable to think past the sheer exhaustion weighing him down. The jump had been so much longer than he was expecting. His arms had gone numb from being held up. The shoulder Thrawn had shot burned. Even his mind felt stretched out in all the wrong ways, pulled apart and squashed back together all lumpen and misshapen.
He could hear voices above him—shouting, barking orders, angry yelling—but it was all muddled white noise on his senses, his last fleeting thought that he hoped Chopper remembered to give Sabine his saber—for safekeeping, to protect her when he couldn't, so she'd remember him—before the darkness stole him away, keeping him in dreamless sleep until he awoke again, groggy, into a fresh new nightmare.
The first months... were not good.
-SW-
She moved into the old communications tower permanently after the first months. Ryder had offered her one of the apartments in Capital City, but Sabine had turned it down. There were so many homeless and displaced from the Chimaera's bombardment, not to mention the long years of Imperial occupation... she wouldn't feel right taking one of their homes for herself. She always had a place on the Ghost of course but Sabine could tell that Hera was itching to get back to Yavin, back into the wider fight, the wider Rebellion, now that they knew the Empire's yoke could be broken, and Sabine still felt like there was so much work for her to do on here on Lothal.
Besides, the tower had become something of a sanctuary for her. A place to get away from all the pressures and hassles and stresses and just be alone for a while, clearing her thoughts.
She had been tidying it up, wiping down the fixtures, dusting off the surfaces. It wasn't a bad little shelter, close enough to the city that it was still accessible but far enough out that she felt like she had her own space.
She could see why Ezra had liked it.
Thinking of him still brought about a fresh sting of pain and grief in her heart, but she held onto hope and his last words.
He'd had a plan to take out Thrawn. He must have had a plan to work his way back home to them.
So in the meantime she would keep his lightsaber safe, protect his planet and his people from whatever retaliatory attack the Empire was surely preparing, and try to make herself useful.
-SW-
Ezra hammered together a broken patch of metal hull, under the watchful eyes of his Stormtrooper guard. He felt extremely nervous being out in the open hanger, the resentful eyes of Imperials all around him, casting glares at him constantly, but Thrawn had promised not to let him come to harm as long as he made himself useful.
The tentative deal had worked so far, so Ezra swallowed down his apprehension and tried to focus on the work.
He wasn't exactly comfortable or enthusiastic helping repair the ship, after all the effort and energy he'd spent ensuring it would never be able to return to the Empire again, but he didn't have a choice, it was this or stay locked in his cell all day—or be put to the interrogation table, as Thrawn had threatened a few times now on Ezra's more uncooperative days—and Ezra knew he stood a better chance of escaping if he was occasionally let out.
Even if the simmering anger he could feel in the Chimaera's crew through the Force made his heavily-guarded cell feel much safer, sometimes.
Enoch was the first one to try to murder him.
He blew past the guards, socking one unconscious before the warning alarm in the Force was even finished ringing, and had Ezra on the ground, one gloved hand around his throat, the other punching, breaking his nose, in mere moments.
Ezra fought back, pinned underneath the man, and it seemed to take a very long time for the other guard to pull Enoch off him, for reinforcements to encircle him, for Thrawn to make his way down to restore order.
The man gave Ezra a cursory red-eyed glance as Ezra stood there, blood dripping down his face, one hand on his abused throat, before turning to Ezra's would-be killer. Enoch was given the standard lecture: Ezra was not to be harmed under Thrawn's orders, Thrawn was still making use of him and would be extremely put out by his extermination.
And then the bastard promoted Enoch on the spot, praising his initiative and physical prowess in taking out Ezra's handlers.
A cold look was paid in Ezra's direction, the warning in Thrawn's eyes clear. Ezra gripped his jaw and wiped the blood away with his sleeve, biting back a million sarcastic comments, feeling again the weight of his captivity. Thrawn wanted him on edge, wanted him to see how easily his fragile safety could be shattered.
He wasn't going to be cowed by this. He would escape. Or Sabine would find him. Between her and Ashoka, he knew they could find a way to find him.
-SW-
They couldn't find him.
Sabine had had such high hopes, when Ahsoka finally made contact, finally made it off of Malachor, sneaking aboard a ship that belonged to one Morgan Elsbeth—an Imperial magistrate far too interested in forbidden and esoteric Dark Side artifacts—and made her way to Lothal.
But there was simply no trace of him, anywhere.
It was like he had vanished from the galaxy.
"What about the purrgil?" Sabine had asked, once, when they were almost out of options and ideas. "Can we track them? Maybe they have documented migratory routes."
Zeb had been skeptical—"We don't know if Ezra even told them to go along their normal migration routes."—and Ahsoka had been more keen on the potential lead Elsbeth presented—apparently she and Thrawn had worked together in the past—but Hera and Kallus were amenable to the suggestion. Kallus used his former Imperial connections to track down the premiere research centers that specialized in purrgil and Hera took a few weeks away from Yavin, for maternity leave, she claimed on the paperwork, though Jacen was already a month old now.
But the three of them were only met with disappointment, the stellar cetologists and scientists they spoke to lamenting that Imperial hunting policies had driven the creatures almost to extinction, that they hadn't even seen any purrgil since before the Liberation of Lothal.
"That pod you're talking about might have been the last one in existence," one man told Sabine, sadly.
What remained of the Ghost crew returned empty-handed, Hera, Zeb, and Kallus parting ways with Sabine to return to Yavin.
Sabine trudged into the tower with heavy, leaden heart. The paintings and doodles she'd added to the walls to make it more lively seemed dull and colorless in the somber light of the moons.
She sank to the floor for moment, brought to her knees by the weight pressing down on her, holding back tears.
She pressed the side of her hand against her mouth, stumbling back up to her feet, turning on lights and trying to fill the room with some semblance of warmth and normality as she turned on burners and got down food containers, but the space seemed so empty, hollowed out like bleached bones, and far too quiet.
Her eyes blurred and her hands went out of focus as she looked at them.
-SW-
The empty quiet space inside his cell was disrupted suddenly by swift tapping footsteps, coming down the hall.
Ezra raised his head up from his pillowed arms. Sensing the approaching presences, he sighed and rolled himself upright, swinging his feet down to the floor.
The marching steps came to a halt in front of his room. He was momentarily taken aback at the sheer anger he could feel through the Force; he wondered with apprehension if he was about to have another attempt made on his life.
But the troopers that opened the door and came down the stairs stepped to the side and Ezra relaxed a fraction. It was just Thrawn, just Thrawn.
Ezra stood and crossed his arms, as the Grand Admiral stalked down the steps with vibrating fury, red eyes sharply narrowed and blazing.
"Lemme guess," Ezra snarked, tone a bit flippant, feeling vindicated. "The thing was booby trapped and killed someone. I told you to leave it alo—"
Thrawn closed the distance fast, his hand flashing up.
Crack!
Ezra stumbled back from the punch to his chin, his head nearly going vertical. Alarmed, he jerked himself straight, in time to catch Thrawn reaching for him, the blue fingers grabbing, closing tight around his neck.
"What did you do?!" Thrawn demanded furiously, hands like a vice around Ezra's throat, squeezing.
Wide-eyed, Ezra strained for breath, pulled at Thrawn's hands, wild alarms inside his head, frantically trying to think of what had pissed Thrawn off this time and coming up blank.
"I... I don't..." he gargled, "...what?"
Snarling shortly, Thrawn released his throat, left hand digging into the roots of his hair and gripping, the other closing around his upper arm and yanking him harshly, leading him up the steps and out into the hall.
His heart pounded, terror turning his breaths into short, shrill pants. His pulse raced, a sick feeling turning over in his stomach. He stumbled along as Thrawn dragged him through the ship, not even bothering with binders or with his usual handlers just full-force hauling him bodily, personally.
Ezra didn't understand, his mind still spinning itself dizzy trying to figure out what he could have possibly done and why Thrawn was so angry about it.
He hadn't performed any small acts of sabotage or rebellion in weeks.
Hadn't even really been snarky when they'd found the strange device in the top chamber of the old fortress ruins, just commented, "I wouldn't touch it, it's probably got some nasty surprise hidden in it." to which Thrawn had replied a neutral, "I will take that into consideration."
Heart in his throat, Ezra gave a timid tug at Thrawn's grip. Dread shot through his stomach when Thrawn merely firmed his hold tighter in response. The alarms in his head joined the shrill ringing of the Force, beating out danger warnings. It was everywhere, reverberating all around him, off every single person they passed. It blazed inside Thrawn with a steady, ominous pulse. Ezra had never sensed so much fury off him.
Oh.
Oh no.
Thrawn was really going to kill him this time, wasn't he?
He swallowed dryly, throat tight. He almost couldn't breathe.
He wasn't brought up to the bridge.
He was taken off the ship, into the fortress. Whispers of Dark Side energy curled around his ears and Ezra's fear compounded. His eyes looked around frantically for avenues of escape.
But Thrawn just returned them to the high tower chamber. The device was active, a glowing holoprojection floating above the floor. Thrawn brought him in for a closer look, Ezra's feet stumbling as the Grand Admiral unexpectedly released him.
"Would you perhaps care to explain this?" Thrawn hissed from behind him.
Unsteady, Ezra pulled himself as straight as he could, willing himself not to look back at Thrawn, trying not to tremble. He studied the holoprojection, acutely aware of the man's eyes on him.
Two blue swirling clusters of stars floated above the emitter. The smaller one was in more prominence, a bright blinking yellow circling around a particular blip, which seemed to have several long lines intersecting it.
"What am I looking at?" Ezra asked, genuinely clueless, chancing a glance back at Thrawn.
The narrowed red eyes glowed eerily in the dim room. "This is a map of our current location," Thrawn told him, tone icy and chilling. He waved past Ezra to indicate the larger star cluster in the holoprojection. "And that," he continued, voice tight and terse, "is our galaxy."
Ezra whipped his head back towards the projection in shock. Now he could recognize the patterns in the swirling galactic spiral arms, the hyperspace lanes, the different regions, the Core Worlds clustered around the bright star center and the floating Outer Rim worlds on the edges.
His heart and stomach sank. The implications crashed over him in a slow flood of realization.
They were in another galaxy.
He swallowed again, heavily, harshly, feeling a lump move down to the pit of his stomach.
"Oh wow... my plan worked way better than I'd thought," was all he could comment, voice small.
The punch that crashed against the back of his head sent him to his knees in front of the holoprojection. Thrawn's hands latched around his head and drove his face into the patterns on the floor. Pain smashed though him.
Dazed, all Ezra could do was look up through the swirling blue motes of the holoprojection, dull to the pain, emotionally numb as the brutal assault continued, as Thrawn dealt blow after blow, slamming violent punches into his head and face and body.
The only thought in his head was the sick revelation that he was trapped in another galaxy, Sabine would never find him, he was never going home.
-SW-
"I can't wait to come home."
Sabine replayed his last words over and over again inside her head.
"I can't wait to come home."
What was she missing? What had Ezra meant? What had he wanted from her, with his comment about how he was "counting on her"?
"More than the others, I need you to understand."
She didn't. She didn't know what he was talking about, saying he had to 'make the decision no one else could'.
Frustrated, she replayed the recording again, the one he'd made for her, specifically, as if the thousandth time would reveal answers that had been hidden to her thus far.
He smiled and waved and called her name, in that adorable, dorky way she knew. He apologized for disappearing on her. He said some cryptic kark about her fight not being over, about not being able to be there to help her, said sorry again, told her he was counting on her.
Infuriated, she grabbed her helmet and threw it across the room at his holographic face. His image wavered, the little handheld projector almost knocking from its place.
The sudden motion and noise startled the loth-cat napping under the worktable; it jumped up and scurried under the bed, little talons scritching on the floor.
Sabine sat heavily on a crate, staring towards the recording, blinking back the heat in her eyes.
"You were supposed to come home," she whispered, in a thin, strained voice. "Where are you? Lothal needs you." Lothal was flourishing, the Death Star's destruction had distracted the Empire completely, bought them time. "Hera needs you." Even while Hera threw herself into the Rebellion's work, she had begged for just two weeks away from the front lines, but the infant son who needed her and the squadron of pilots that required her time prevented her from taking them. "I need you," Sabine corrected, voice breaking.
Her next inhale was shaky, clogged with emotion.
"Please..." she begged towards his image. "I don't know how to do this without you."
-SW-
Ezra didn't know how he'd gotten away.
Half-delirious from the drugs and... whatever the Nightmothers had been doing to him, he stumbled through the sterile stone hallways, shooting troopers with his stolen blaster as he went, fighting his way up from the catacombs until he was outside the fortress and running out into the cold, moonless night.
A painful stitch pulled at his side; his hand was slick with blood from holding it. He pulled air heavily through his lungs, teeth rattling as his feet pounded.
There was no direction to his flight. Just an instinct to get as far away as possible.
The strong pool of Dark Side energy faded behind him but the Force was still so weird here, so dulled and heavy, twisted and full of death. Huge bones and spires of rock like bones were scattered like a giant killing field in the rolling hills he made himself climb, further and further away from the fortress.
He gained a peak and looked back, seeing the castle of the Great Mothers lit up with eerie green mist.
A voice like a siren song echoed in the Force, calling him back, enticing him with soothing unspoken words as the Nightmothers' magicks swirled around the towering spire.
Ezra squeezed his eyes closed, turning with a choked sound, resisting the beckoning spell.
He ran again, heaving for breath, eyes blurred and staggering blindly through the dark.
He tried not to let himself feel any hope. Even if he'd escaped, even if he made it out far enough that Thrawn couldn't just catch him again, he was still trapped here, he reminded himself. The only ship off the planet was the dilapidated Chimaera, which couldn't even achieve low atmo right now, straining under its own weight just docked with the castle.
He was still stuck in another galaxy with no way out.
He ran and ran, lungs screaming, the cold of the night seeping into him.
Exhaustion brought him down a mile later.
He collapsed, his legs like jelly; it took all his strength just to find a crevasse in the rocks to curl up into, face tight from the pain in his injured side. He tried to stem the bleeding, pressing helplessly on his soaked clothes.
It was no use.
He huddled in the hollow, breaths tight, straining for the Force for some comfort in what looked increasingly like his last moments.
He was going to die here. Sabine would never find him. She couldn't possibly reach him. Ezra thought back to the recordings he'd left and regretted all of his final words to her, regretted not telling her he was probably going to die, that she shouldn't wait for him, that she should let him go and move on.
She should move on.
-SW-
She couldn't move on.
Sabine was a bubble trapped in amber, stuck reliving that moment over and over.
"Ezra please, get out of there!"
"I can't do that. It's up to all of you now."
Mandalore burned but all her eyes saw when she watched the footage of the bombs dropping on Sundari was the turbolasers of the Chimaera raining down on Capital City.
She helped her family flee their home on Krownest, what remained of Clan Wren settling on Lothal far away from the conflict, from the war, but she couldn't even take any pride or relief from their safety, because Ezra was supposed to be there with them and he wasn't.
Lothal needed its Jedi protector back and he wasn't there.
She begged Ahsoka to teach her. If I was a Jedi I could have saved him, she thought. I could have stopped Mandalore's destruction, like he stopped Lothal's. They were thoughts that haunted her in the wee hours of the night, when the nightmares and memories replayed like echos in her head. If I had the Force I could protect Lothal like he wanted me to.
Ahsoka had reluctantly indulged her in some saber training but balked when Sabine asked her for more.
"I can't teach you what you don't have," she'd told Sabine, as gently as she could.
Sabine pushed the issue.
Ahsoka shut her down.
"This is not healthy," she was warned, sternly. "You need to process your grief, not let it fester."
Words she hadn't wanted to hear. Not from Ahsoka, not from anyone. How was she supposed to go on, when the person most important to her in the galaxy was gone?
It was a dark year for Sabine. The tower grew messier and messier; she didn't have the heart or energy to clean it. She didn't even want to paint anymore. What was the point? He would never see all the work she'd done. So she shut herself away, didn't speak to anyone for months, didn't open the door except to her father, sometimes, who just held her and let her cry herself sick.
In the end, it was Hera who had to pull Sabine out of the mire and depression when it was deepest. She parked the Ghost at the base of the tower and stayed with her three months while Sabine put herself back together. It was Hera who dragged Sabine out to see her family more often, made her make plans with friends so she wouldn't be alone. It was Hera who plopped a babbling toddler Jacen into her arms with the expectation that helping care for him would give her something to do besides wallow, and when Jacen picked up his first crayons Sabine felt a spark light in her heart again for the first time in ages.
It was Hera who talked long with her into the night, sympathizing, empathizing. Grieving alongside her.
"Ezra wouldn't want you to stay stuck here," she told Sabine, a gentle hand on her shoulder. "He'd want you to live, and remember him. We honor him by finishing the fight, bringing the peace he and Kanan hoped for into being."
Sabine wiped her eyes and mutely nodded.
She didn't know how she was going to get to that place, emotionally, when it still felt like part of her had died when Ezra disappeared, but she knew that Hera was right.
Ezra wouldn't want her to give up.
-SW-
Some stubborn part of him didn't give up that night, clinging to life until the Noti stumbled across him.
It was touch and go for a while; his wound became infected and he burned with fever for a week straight, lying flat on several of their woven mats as worried beady-eyed faces crowded him and wiped his forehead.
When his fever broke, it was like a light had come through the clouds. The Force rang around him, warm and comforting, feeling almost normal. He sat up and breathed deeply, and let it fill him with renewed serenity and purpose.
He couldn't lose hope. Sure, he was stuck on a planet in another galaxy, far out of reach, far from home. But nothing was impossible with the Force.
He would stay. He would fight. He would keep looking for chances, for a path out.
And he would make damn sure Thrawn wasn't leaving this place, either.
He stuck with the Noti, learned their language. Protected them from the bandits and raiders that roamed these desolate, wild plains, from the strange flora and fauna that posed constant threats to the survival of anything on the planet's surface. Kept them away from whatever dark source of immense power he could sense was contained within this world, a power that constantly whispered to him, tickling his ears on his worst days. In time he learned to drown the voice out, ignore it like so much static and wind.
He finally changed out of his old, now quite ragged, clothes, putting the orange fabric away with reverence.
He snuck back to the fortress and the Chimaera's crash site again and again, sometimes with what meager backup the Noti could provide, sometimes on his own. He could never get too close—some ward or magick always alerted to him, always led to Thawn driving him off with numbers.
Those numbers dwindled. Ezra picked patrols and search parties off, nicking helmets and trooper dog tags. He sabotaged equipment left out in the field, burned raider encampments. Once, he managed to jury-rig a small explosive device, which he used to blow a lovely hole in the side of one of the creepy towering monoliths, collapsing it atop a squad of Stormtroopers with a fireball he was sure Sabine would be proud of.
Once he even stole one of the Chimaera's remaining gunships right out from under the noses of its pilots and crashed it into the back of the Star Destroyer, undoing months worth of repair work. The fortress had been lit up neon green with magick that night, hurling fireballs down on the Noti's plodding vehicles from across the distance.
Ezra waged his slow war of attrition on Thrawn and only grew stronger in skill in the Force as the Grand Admiral's forces grew weaker.
He let his hair grow out, gained a beard—he looked like his father, he noted with some sadness, one day when he found a mirror—sewed and repaired his own clothes and armor like he'd done years ago on the streets of Lothal.
He sat while the Noti camped and whittled little pendants and talismans, emblazoned with starbirds, keeping his hope and part of Sabine alive within him.
And he waited.
-SW-
They won the war.
The New Republic struggled to set itself up, rebuild the systems and scaffolding of democracy long broken by Palpatine's cruel reign. They barely had the time or resources to spare but they always eventually granted Hera what she needed to resume the search again.
Sabine and the others went with her, every single time, no matter how far apart in the galaxy they were.
She watched Jacen grow up and her heart panged at how much he looked like Kanan, how his eager energy and bright smile reminded her of Ezra.
She put her armor aside except for moments of greatest need-they were at peace now, mostly, she could stop fighting. She chose instead to dig out some of his old clothes from the drawers in the Ghost, tailoring them to fit her. Sometimes she could imagine she could still pick up his scent, lingering on the fabric.
She kept up with her lightsaber forms and drills, but didn't nag Ahsoka to train her. The Togruta was a bit preoccupied these days, anyway, helping Skywalker with his Jedi school and trying to keep ahead of Elsbeth in the quest for ancient Force relics.
She grew out her hair, dyed the tips of it bright orange, her roots deep violet purple. That had always been his favorite of the hairstyles she'd worn.
She named the skrunkly little loth-cat and let it come around more and more often until it was sleeping in her bed.
She'd watch the holorecordings he'd left her just to remember how he looked and sounded.
The tower's walls exploded with color again, a constant kaleidoscope of painted images moving, shifting, and changing. And when Ryder asked her to paint a commemorative memorial, to honor both the Spectres in general and Ezra specifically, she didn't hesitate to accept the task.
She captured his likeness with meticulous strokes, missing him like an ache deep inside her. She wasn't okay yet, not yet, but she was getting there. She let her brush and sprayers become her meditation routine, working bit by careful bit to do the Lost Son of Lothal proper justice.
If he came home, she vowed, she would tell him, everything that was in her heart and more.
And she waited.
(A/N)- *passes out the tissues* Y'all good?
Thanks for reading, please leave me a comment if you enjoyed, I thrive on positive reinforcement lol.