Chapter Text
A strange woman followed the Armorer's apprentice, Tira, into his forge. The young Tribeswoman was silent, but her posture was more than a bit hostile. The other woman didn’t seem too pleased, either.
Tira stopped walking as she and the Mandalorian—if she was Mandalorian—came to a stop in the doorway of the forge. The woman’s armor was scoured clean, save for her vibrantly-colored helmet. Over her kit she wore a torn, singed jacket, and a heavy-looking satchel was slung cross-body over one shoulder.
The mirage-like glimmers around her warned the Armorer that she might be star-touched, too.
“Armorer,” she greeted evenly, stepping forward to kneel in front of him, mirroring his own position in front of the Forge, before shifting to sit cross-legged.
“Are you of the Tribe?” he asked.
“No.”
The forge hissed behind the Armorer, but other than that, it was silent. Tira knew better than to make a scene at this moment.
“Then why have you come?”
“I want to make a trade.” She swung the satchel’s strap over her head and lifted it, placing it on the floor between them. “There are over a hundred ingots of pure beskar here.”
As she spoke, she lifted the flap of the satchel, revealing the shimmering ingots. He felt his fingers twitch towards them, despite himself, and Tira took a full step forward.
Beskar was hard to find, these days.
The heretic warrior looked up at him from beneath her colorful helmet. “My kit was damaged in a fight, and I have no way to reforge it. Let me use your forge, and you can have all this beskar, save what I might need for myself. It won’t be much.”
The Armorer thought for a moment. The beskar belonged with them. In theory, they could simply kill her and take it; she had no right to it. But she carried herself like a warrior, and a star-touched warrior was no thing to be messed with.
Especially if that hilt hanging from her hip was what he thought it was.
And she had come, it seemed, in good faith, asking for a trade. His warriors had brought rumors of a Mandalorian in the undercity here, appearing some nights and then vanishing for weeks. It was said she followed the clone patrols like a guardian angel.
She had certainly done a nice job of cleaning up a few of the more unsavory sectors.
But what finally made his mind up was the shadow. It loomed over her for an echo of a moment, hulking down in the comparatively-small room. Its red eyes flashed and the fire of the forge gleamed against its silver horns as it bowed its head in a slow nod.
A mythosaur.
Whoever this woman was, she was more than star-touched.
She was star-chosen.
Why the Ka’ra would pick this heretic child, the Armorer supposed he would never know. But he had felt the growing cold; the dying lights. Someone was needed.
As was the will of the fallen kings, he would do.
“Not everyone can operate a forge.”
She paused for a second, then confirmed all his suspicions. “The... stars will guide me.”
“Very well,” the Armorer agreed. “There will be no need. My apprentice will reforge the armor, under my supervision, in exchange for the beskar.”
It would be good practice for Tira. And if she slipped up, well… it wasn’t their Tribeswoman in danger.
And besides, he reasoned, with that creature, very little could be a danger to her.
“But alor—” Tira burst out, and the Armorer held up his hand sharply. She dropped her voice. “She’s not one of us!”
He ignored the angry girl, rising to his feet and staring down at the woman, as he added one final condition.
“And, you may not remove your helmet until you have left the covert. This is the way.”
She nodded.
“That’s fair enough.”
The Armorer moved to the back of the room and watched in silence as the strange girl began, removing the jacket and folding it carefully, setting it to one side. Piece by piece, she stripped off the armor, starting with her shoulderplates—everything but her vambraces, which she set on top of the jacket, and jetpack, which she put next to it. She had not lied; her armor was very badly damaged. Scorched, even melted in places.
Then, she emptied the bag of beskar, and carefully selected eight large ingots. The rest, she pushed to one side. She took up her portion, carrying it over near the forge.
“You have much more than enough to turn your armor into a full kit, there,” the Armorer remarked.
“Better safe than sorry.”
Tira reluctantly stepped up and began to heat the forge. “Why, are you some kind of coward?” she taunted, and the Armorer sighed. Would the girl ever learn to hold her tongue?
The woman scoffed. “I’d like to see you fight off a four-armed cyborg with spinning laser swords of death.”
“And you did?”
“Look at her armor, apprentice,” the Armorer intervened, before the bickering could grow too much—or the creature could reappear. “All that damage is evidence that she speaks the truth.”
Tira huffed. “And is that one of his laser swords of death?”
She nodded to the hilt attached to the woman’s belt.
The other woman slowly sank down into that same cross-legged pose, clearly seeing that she would not be allowed to use the forge. “No.”
“Where did you get it?”
“A Jedi.”
“Did you kill them?”
“No.” A quick intake of breath and a crack in her voice was all that betrayed the woman’s horror at the thought of killing the Jedi in question.
“Did you steal it?”
“No.”
“Then how did you get a lightsaber?”
The woman didn’t reply, and the Armorer examined her.
The posture.
The pose.
The serenity even mixed with turmoil.
“Who are you?” the Armorer asked.
She didn’t move. Didn’t look up.
“Nobody.”
“What is your clan name?”
She paused for a long second.
“Bridger,” murmured the woman.
“I haven’t heard of a Clan Bridger.”
Her voice was too even for her to really be calm.
“You wouldn't have. I’m a clan of one.”
Burning.
Ashes and fire.
Blood running down the steps of Jabba’s palace.
Through the streets of Mos Espa.
A shadow.
Red and black and fear.
“Ani!”
Anakin awoke with a gasp, the echoes of his dream fading away. Padmé was staring at him with concern.
“Ani?”
“A dream,” he rasped. Curiosity shone in her eyes.
“Like… before?”
Like the dreams about your mother, she meant. The ones you had on Naboo.
He nodded, swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat.
“Tatooine. There was—war. Not the war. But—a war.”
Padmé sat up all the way, suddenly awake. “Your mother?”
“I didn’t see her.”
Padmé watched him. Studied his face. She looked like she was about to say something, but Anakin acted first. He stood, threw a robe on, and grabbed his comlink.
“I gotta make a call.”
Sabine ascended to the shadows on top of a building, following the two white-and-red figures with her eyes. Once they were nearly out of sight, she moved; launching herself from the rooftop and sailing through the air to land on the next building. Her new armor sat a little strangely; just different enough to make her notice.
But in the end, beskar was beskar, and the more, the better. It would take some getting used to, but now she had a full kit. There had even been a little left over of what she’d taken for herself. She had no use for it, but the Armorer insisted she take it with her.
She glimpsed a shadow in the corner of her eye and smiled.
Before, when she lived on Lothal, she would see things, sometimes. Loth-wolves, she thought at the time.
Now she knew better.
The mythosaur never showed itself full-on, but she felt its presence. It followed her—not every day, not every week, even, but at random times, random places.
Ever since That Day.
Ever since That Dream.
Ever since the Force opened to her, pouring through her in a way she didn’t know was possible, feeling like her blood was made of molten metal, like she was flying and drowning all at once—the last thing she remembered before waking up back in the Temple.
She hadn’t felt anything like it ever before, or ever since.
The white wolf hadn’t shown its face, either, since That Day, and Sabine hadn’t felt its presence like she could sense the mythosaur’s. But somehow… she knew it was watching. Waiting for the next time the mythosaur crossed the line from guide and protector to, well… bad influence.
But so far, the mythosaur had been on its best behavior. It had led her to the gang with the stockpile of stolen beskar; it had led her to the covert and the forge.
It had yet to lead her to Ezra.
It never would.
Sabine abandoned that thought as much as she could. Master Kenobi had once told her that the Jedi way was to never stop trying.
Until the moment we can do no more, we try, and then we let go.
It had been time to let go for a while now.
The truth was that Ezra was dead.
But there was more than that, wasn’t there? Ezra was dead didn’t say it all. It didn’t say that she had been the one to hold him as it happened, or how his blood had pooled on the invisible pathway of the World Between Worlds. It didn’t say how every word they had both said was burned into her memory, even the ones she wished she could forget. It didn’t say that she woke up from the dream-that-was-not-a-dream clutching a bloody orange jacket.
It didn’t say how she had screamed.
Random things would bring it back to her—whenever she thought she had moved on, it would strike, hitting her all over again that he was gone.
And the worst part was that there was a tiny, stupid little whisper in her mind that reminded her that the bond was still there, reminding her that she didn’t remember how her last trip into the World Between Worlds had ended, telling her that she could have saved him and still not know it.
It made her want to hope.
Hopeless hope was a distraction she couldn’t afford. With it, letting go just wasn’t possible.
Sabine cast a glance at the clone troopers she was shadowing. The lower levels patrol was dangerous. She’d seen two clones brought into the Healing Halls, too far gone for the Republic medical center to waste resources on helping them.
Jumper made it. Sketch didn’t.
At the time, Sabine had been restless and grumpy and maybe a little spiteful, and, well, Healer Che could keep her grounded on Coruscant, but she couldn’t keep Sabine grounded from action. Her troopers once called her the Angel of the 212th, after all, and even if it was kind of a joke, sometimes, she wouldn’t quit that title. If she couldn’t be there for the 212th, she would be there for the Corries. Force knows, working for Palpatine, they needed a guardian angel. The ones actually in the Senate, she couldn’t do much for, but Anakin’s wife (yeah, they weren’t subtle) and her little squad of Senators Who Actually Try To Do Good Stuff seemed to be doing their part to have that covered.
She’d since been allowed back into action, but at times like this—stops back on Coruscant for a day or two—well, it was a habit. And she’d passed Eight-One and Caf on her way back up from the covert and the forge, and it couldn’t hurt to trail along for a little while.
They came to a stop, and Sabine saw that they were at their speeder. It must be time to go back up, then. She waited until they were safely on their way up through one of the surface portals before following.
Her jetpack carried her up to what she liked to think of as the dark side of Coruscant. Not Dark, but just dark. There was so little light here, and so little pollution, that it was the only place on the planet that she could see the stars.
Her feet tapped softly as she alighted on a small rooftop—might actually have been an old comm tower, there was a large antenna up here—and pulled off her helmet.
She’d changed her hair, a few months ago. Sabine liked it longer, but sometimes the orange in the corner of her eye turned to bloody red.
She dyed her hair white and cut it short.
Maybe Sabine didn’t dream of the World Between Words anymore, but she still dreamed—dreamed of memories.
She was glad, in a way, that Jacen had accepted Master Windu’s offer. He was off saving lives as a Padawan Commander somewhere else, and Sabine hoped she kept her comm messages frequent and chipper enough that he couldn’t tell everything that was going on with her. He would’ve wanted to help, and he didn’t need her baggage.
On the whole, she was okay. But ask Master Kenobi, or Commander Cody, or Anakin, or maybe even Ahsoka, and they would say the truth—that two nights out of every five, she had been screaming in her sleep. At least she hadn’t torn apart the room with a Force-blast like she did that day in the Halls of Healing, when she woke up covered in blood that wasn’t hers.
Sabine sat down on the roof and began.
“Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc.”
The wind breezed through her hair.
“Ni partayli, gar darasuum.”
Sabine tilted her face up to the sky and started at the end.
“Loop. Chaser. Thunder. Speedbump. Trickshot.”
Troopers she had lost. Troopers she might have saved.
“Nil. Nova. Harmony. Magnet. Mirage. Near Miss. Daredevil. Skipper.”
And all the names I didn’t know, she added, inside.
Some days she could only make it that far. Today, she thought she could finish, even if she couldn’t breathe enough to put sound to the words.
“Ursa Wren. Alrich Wren. Tristan Wren. Ketsu Onyo. Garazeb Orrelios. Chopper. Her—”
The first tears began, blurring the sky to a black void, and her voice caught.
“Hera Syndulla. Kanan Jarrus.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, she blinked away the droplets until she could see the stars again.
The brightest one was gone.
“Sabine?”
She winced, and ignored her crackling comlink.
“Sabine. Come on, pick up. Pick up. Answer me. I know you can hear me. Sabiiiiiiiiiine....”
She grabbed it up and snapped, “What, Anakin?”
“I have a question about the... the thing.”
She sighed, slumping back against the antenna.
The thing was her being a time traveler and/or the future.
“Can it wait?” she asked, voice cracking despite her best efforts.
Anakin must have heard it. “Um... I'll make it quick. Can you See Tatooine?”
The fact that he didn't just straight-up ask what Tatooine was like in her future clued her into the fact that he was probably not alone.
She paused a second, then continued the charade. “Only an old Pathway. It's just like it always has been.”
“No civil wars, slave revolts, that kind of thing?”
“No. But it's an old Pathway,” she reminded him. “Things could have changed.”
Anakin must have been lost in his thoughts now, because he was speaking to himself. “I gotta figure out what's happening on Tatooine. Something's wrong. I gotta... I gotta call Mom. Yeah, I—”
Sabine hung up on him.
Closing her eyes, she breathed a sigh of pain.
“Ezra Bridger,” she whispered, and with the last name of her remembrances hanging in the bitter air, Sabine swung herself up into the night.