#and. and ketsu taught her that

[inquisitor-apologist]

What if I taught you how to make bombs and you taught me how to fight for something bigger than myself… and we were both girls

#felt like this deserved its own post #the fact that ketsu taught Sabine how to make bombs is fucking insane to me #like that’s one of her defining hobbies #she’s the demo guy #and. and ketsu taught her that #star wars #chewing on the walls my god #rebels #star wars rebels #sw rebels #is this the original post tag #sabine wren #ketsu onyo #ketbine

[isorottatime]

god, you know what i think about a lot?? sabine’s opinion on the jedi. she was raised in empire-era mandalore (well. krownest. mandalore system) and then sent to the imperial academy when she was 12~13. so there’s no goddamn way she ever had positive opinions on the jedi. and don’t worry, i didn’t forget the siege of mandalore!! yes, ursa fought with ahsoka…. but that was because of bo-katan. bo-katan is not a fan of jedi. during s7 she was even less of a fan of maul so “other enemy of my enemy is my friend” yadda yadda— i’m getting off track. ursa was a nite owl, is my point; an offshoot of death watch. yeah, the nite owls were evidently a bit less hostile towards jedi… but then, the empire. i don’t think it’s talked about enough that the empire absolutely decimated the public’s opinion of the jedi. they said the jedi were planning a coup (which they did, but let’s not get into these details here) they slandered their reputation; for example, they said plo koon killed children. anyway. ursa raised her daughter under imperial rule; it’s shown in season three that sucking up to the empire is very important to her (obviously. to survive lmao). and she’s mandalorian. so tween sabine absolutely grew up hating the jedi. then! the imperial academy— the propaganda against the jedi didn’t contradict anything she’d been taught so far, so why would she question it? she didn’t even really question the empire until they used the duchess like … that. she was raised pretty comfortably. then just because she defected and evaded the empire, why would she question what she’d been taught about the jedi? what would push her? the general public’s opinion hadn’t just flipped after o66, people had been losing faith during the whole war. sabine had known nothing but negativity about the jedi. then!!! she’s found, half dead (ketsu showed no signs of jedi non-negativity, either) by these three randoms and a murder droid. how does she find out kanan’s a jedi? does kanan keep his distance at first, then she confronts him? 14~15 y/o sabine finding herself having to rely on these strange people to nurse her back to health, with nowhere to go.., then she finds out one of them’s a jedi… her whole settling in arc in general. i Crave it. how did her opinion on the jedi change?? ++ we get one line from hera in trails of the darksabre, where she says “remember how long it took for her to trust us.” i’m chomping at the bit where is sabine’s arc about her trusting the crew. taking them as her new family. she’s the most wary when ezra joins, she doesn’t trust him tipping her life —that she finally feels settled into— upside down. he’s 14~15, just like she was when they found her. is the crew trying to replace her? they found a kid who’s got more skills. of course she was only there because she was good with weapons. this kid is force-sensitive! her times up. oh god what now— you get the picture. 

this absolutely spiralled away from my original point 

#.txt #sabineposting #sabine wren #swr #star wars #sorry about the grammar #no proofreading. sorry #sw rebels #star wars rebels #sabine #sabine star wars #ghost crew #the ghost crew #the ghost #space mom #space dad #ursa wren #tcw #tcw s7

[ladywren7]

HAPPY REBELS REMEMBERED 2021!!!

Let me just say, that Rebels has helped me through so much and I love it more than anyone will ever know.

Rebels got me through my parents' divorce, when I was finding out how much of a horrible person my father actually is. When I had to grow up way too fast and reality hit me like a bus.

Back then I would always get bullied in school, and I still did in the future, but everyday when I came home and felt like utter shit while the world was falling apart around me, I would always turn that TV on to Rebels.

And they helped me, they helped me so much. The characters facing their struggles helped me face my struggles and fears, they taught me valuable life lessons as well.

For exapmle, once I made a very huge mistake. I let myself get used because I couldn't say the little word "No." I was too scared because I wanted to stay loyal to, who I thought was, my friend. I didn't want to hurt her feeling and "betray" her so I went along with what she did, and then it happened.

If you guys have read the Forces of Destiny book, Tales of Hope and Courage, you'll recongnize that same situation in the Sabine chapter. She was afraid to let Ketsu down when she didn't want to be apart of the Black Sun anymore, but the forece told her to say "No," because that's what Sabine felt was the right thing to do, and so she did. Too bad that book came out after my incident, but at least I learned for next time.

And the thing is, my connection with Sabine It's kind of crazy, and let me tell you why.

So when I was a yound girl, in my last few years of elementary school, rebels came out and my uncle started watching it becuase he also love star wars.

Back then I wasn't really interested in it so whenever he would watch star wars movies I would go to my room, but one afternoon that changed.

One afternoon I walked into the living room to see my uncle watching it again and I saw the usual characters I always saw, Zeb, Ezra, Kanan, and a little bit of Hera. But when I saw Sabine on screen for the first time I instantly loved her. I guess it was all the different colors she wore and her cool attitude, but I just shouted "I like the Boba Fett girl!"(😂😂 yes I used to call her that bc I had no idea what her name was and I only recongnized the helmet) and my uncle would tell me "Her name is Sabine" until I learned.

Season 2 came and went, and I remember crying when Kanan got blinded and my uncle and mom freaking out when they lost Ahsoka and she was fighting vader (I hadn't watched the clone wars at that time so I was a little confused)

Season 3 came, and now I was really addicted, I loved everything about it, and when the Sabine arc came I felt so touched because when she was trying to learn how to use the darksaber and getting mad I really felt that, trying new things can be hard, especially if it has to do with past experiences you don't want to talk about.

Then when Sabine went to krownest and she felt alone, I definately felt that because her family had left her, and now she had to come back and prove herself, it reminded me of my relationship with my dad, and how someday I was going to have to stand up to him, maybe not make peace, but to tell him I am capable of more than he knows, and that I've grown as a person.

Sabine herself has taught me very valuable lessons and showed me it's okay to be scared, it's okay to ask for help, and to stand up for yourself and others.

And that's just one character.

I have so many other wonderful rebels stories, but unfortunately I can't put all if them in here. I know this post was a little tmi and all over the place, but I just needed to get this out, so thank you Rebels, and Dave please give us animated sequel!!

Rebels Remembered

#star wars #star wars rebels #swr #rebels remembered 2021 #Rebels Remembered #sw rebels #random rants with a fangirl #thank you dave

[galionne-vibin]

Posting short character bios for the Universal Alliance AU (Part 1) because I did that for Ultra Swap and it was really fun.

(I know I posted something similar already but I’ve revamped the story and characters a whole lot since then, so I’m posting this again.)

Also as usual the ages given are human equivalents.

Name: Pigmon "Boss" Age: 53 Species: Pigmon Weapon(s): Unknown Abilities: Multilingualism, Piloting A Pigmon fluent in Japanese, Pegassan, the Ultra Language and several other tongues. He was taught to speak Japanese by Akiko Fuji and assisted Mitsushiro Ide in building his universal micro-translator. The three of them later founded the Galactic Defense Force with the support of Anne Yuri.

Name: Baal Age: 26 Species: Baltan Weapon(s): None Abilities: Illusion Generation, Flight, White Beam The Captain of Team Dada. An orphan who was taken in by a group of peaceful older Baltans, he joined the Galactic Defense Force as a teen. During one of his early missions he was deployed to Planet Dada where he met Ada and her siblings for the first time. He later brought the trio back to Earth with him and the four of them have been living together ever since. He's currently dating Ada.

Name: Ada Age: 24 Species: Dada Weapon(s): Bow, Rifle Abilities: Teleportation, Gunmanship Ada was born a few years before the Second Civil War of Planet Dada. Not long after the war broke out she was sent along with Da and Ad to a training camp where they were to be made into soldiers. Ada however did not want to fight, so she took her siblings and ran away into the wilderness where the three of them survived for several years. Later on she tried returning to her hometown but was shunned for defecting from the war ; and ended up escaping to Earth with the help of Baal. She's a great marksman and is skilled in most ranged weapons, although she has a preference for bows and arrows.

Name: Da Age: 22 Species:  Dada Weapon(s): Cane, Sword Abilities: Teleportation, Swordmanship The middle child of the Dada trio and an expert in bladed weapons (although he started out just using long sticks). He broke his left leg when he was young and the bones never healed properly, so he has a constant limp and uses a cane to walk around. He's very close to Ada and is immensely grateful to her for her care when they were younger, so he's always trying to help her as best he can.

Name: Ad Age: 17 Species: Dada Weapon(s): Brass knuckles Abilities: Teleportation, Several fighting styles The youngest of the Dada siblings ; they had just barely learned to walk when they were sent to the training camp. They have since learned several melee combat techniques and have a particular taste for boxing. Although they're non-verbal they still communicate through signs and writing ; but their preferred method is to use Clacking (the Baltans' equivalent to Morse Code, which in Ad's case involves knocking or tapping on things).

Name: Bega Age: 21 Species: Pegassa Weapon(s): None Abilities: Dark Zone, Black Hole Generation Like many other Pegassans, Bega lost most of his family in the destruction of Pegassa City. He traveled with his mother, Yega, for a few month until the two found Pega, whom they decided to adopt and take with them in their search for a new home. Unfortunately in the absence of any health structure or treatement, Yega's lifelong illness caught up to her and she passed away just after the family reached a refugee camp. Bega and Pega were brought to an orphanage where they met Ketsu and stayed for about a year, before the three of them ran away. Their ship later crashed on Earth where they were found by Pigmon and Marina, and subsequently taken into the Galactic Defense Force.

Name: Pega Age: 9 Species: Pegassa Weapon(s): None Abilities: Dark Zone Pega was still a baby when Pegassa City was destroyed. His parents were able to escape the initial explosion but their ship was damaged in the process, leading to a violent crash neither of them survived. Thankfully Yega and Bega came across the wreckage soon after, rescuing and adopting the infant. Pega considers Bega, Ketsu and Marina as his older siblings ; looking up to Bega in particular. He lives in the GDF headquarters and spends his time being taught by Loop and Pigmon and making paper flowers.

Name: Marina Age: 24 Species: Nonmalt Weapon(s): Knife Abilities: Piloting, Engineering One of the few surviving Nonmalts, Marina was raised by a family of Pitts and joined the GDF at the same time as her adoptive sisters. While she has some skill in close combat she is much more comfortable piloting vehicles- boats, planes, cars ; anything. She also learned a whole lot of engineering on the fly and sometimes helps Loop with his research and maintaining his team of robots.

Name: Ketsu Age: 22 Species: Nackle Weapon(s): Heat Gun Abilities: Eye Lasers, Self Healing, Healing others A young, impulsive and hot-headed Nackle who doesn't like being bossed around. He's Bega's closest friend, although he's also very attached to Marina and Pega. His healing abilities are limited and he has a tendency to overexert himself when trying to help his friends, but he keeps practicing and trying to strengthen his powers. He's absolutely terrified of the ocean and hates having to go in Marina's submarine.

#universal alliance au #pigmon #baal #ada #da #ad #bega #pega #marina #ketsu #look at me writing character bios and not including THE MOST IMPORTANT character of the au #yeah i'm smart #but also there's so much to write about zero and i do not have that kind of energy right now #also please forgive typos and missing words #it is... LATE

[redrikki]

🏳️‍🌈 PRIDE 2020 IS DONE!! 🏳️‍🌈 

Here’s an updated list of my Queer-focused fic.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve written a few stories focusing on queer characters and romances.

Agent Carter

Because Girls Love Girls (The Soulmate City Remix) - There’s something in the water and the next thing Angie knows, she’s waking up with the name Margaret Carter wrapped around her wrist. (Angie Martinelli/Peggy Carter)

One Last Kiss (The Final Storm Remix) - You never forget your first kiss with your nemesis. Dottie won’t forget her last either. At Howard Stark’s funeral, she puts a few things in the ground. (Peggy Carter/Dottie Underwood)

Avatar: Legend of Korra

Girl, Gotten (The Heroine After Remix) - As long as Asami’s the hero, Korra’s okay being the love interest. (Korra/Asami Sato)

Leaves on the Wind - Korra, Asami, and the next Avatar (past Korra/Asami Sato)

Ten-Thousand Words (Which Once See the Light of Day) - There are things they can’t say.  There are things they wont say. There are actions which speak louder than words.  A series of short stories about the ladies of Legend of Korra. (bisexual Asami Sato/Mako, various het pairings)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Playing with Fire (The Dubiously Consensual Remix) - People didn’t tell Azula no. (Azula/Ty Lee)

Battlestar Galactica

Persephone on New Caprica - It’s winter on New Caprica and they’re all Persephone here.  A collection of short stories. (bisexual Felix Gaeta/Eight, various het pairings) Trigger warning: non-con/dub con

Batwoman (TV)

Trapped in the Closet - Kate was never afraid to come out to her father, but she is now. Episode tag to the season 1 finale. (lesbian Kate Kane)

Black Lightning (TV)

Comic Book Life - Comic book Thunder’s boyfriend knew what his woman did, so why couldn’t Anissa tell her girlfriend? (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Truth Will Out - Anissa’s in the closet about her superhero life. Three times she thought about telling Grace and one time she actually did. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Maybe Baby - "Ever think about what kind of power's you and Grace's kids would have?" Jen asked, raising possibilities Anissa had never considered before. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi, Jennifer Pierce)

Sleeping Beauty - Grace had been in coma for over a month now, but Anissa still couldn’t help thinking each visit that this would be the one where she woke up. Maybe today it would be. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Short and to the Mr. Pointy - Collection of drabbles set across all 7 seasons. (Willow Rosenberg/Tara McClay, Willow Rosenberg/Kennedy, Willow Rosenberg/Oz, Larry/Xander Harris, various het pairings)

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (TV)

The Beast You Made of Me - The Waverider’s resident shapeshifters compare notes. (Mona Wu, Genderfluid Charile)

Neither Should You (The Real People Remix) - Rescuing her clones was the right thing to do. They deserved the right to live their lives and make their own choices. Ava just wished they’d stop sleeping with Gary. (Ava Sharpe/Sara Lance, Ava Clones/Gary Green, implied Gary Green/John Constantine)

Downton Abbey

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma - Thomas Barrow’s daemon is a hedgehog. “Mind my spikes.” Five warnings, four relationships and one revelation. (Thomas Barrow/Duke of Crowborrough, Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtney, Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)

Snakes and Lions - Hogwarts AU. In Thomas, Jimmy finds that courage isn’t exclusive to Gryffindors.  Now if only he could find some himself. (Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)

Kipo and the Age of Wonerbeasts

The Hero Was You - Benson likes Troy and Troy likes Benson. Great! Now all Benson has to do is figure out what to do about it. (Benson/Troy)

Miraculous Ladybug

Better Than Ice Cream - Orange, mint, and raspberry could be a tasty combination. The solution to every love triangle should be polyamory, but sometimes it’s just not that simple. Spoilers for Love-Eater. (Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Adrien Agreste/Kagami Tsurugi)

Orphan Black

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - There’s something magical about Uncle Felix’s flat.  Maybe it’s all the art. (Kira Manning, gay Felix Dawkins, lesbian Cosima Niehaus)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

She-Ra (Modesty) Shorts - Three very short Catra/Adora stories. (Catra/Adora)

Parting Strands - Looking out for each other had been their thing, but Adora's starting to suspect that's over. Her thoughts during that scene in "Promise." (Catra/Adora)

Spider-man (Ultimates verse)

Fingertips That Might Ignite - Peter is straight like a straight thing.  Jessica isn’t sure what she is. (Jessica Drew/Johnny Storm, Jessica Drew/OFC)

Gonna Share My Tin Man Heart - Kitty moves in and Kitty moves out. Jessica falls in love somewhere along the way. (Jessica Drew/Kitty Pride)

Star Wars

For Amidala - Her handmaidens had all poured so much of themselves into Amidala, it was like they were part of her now. Padmé didn’t know if she had the strength to let one go. (Padmé/Her Handmaidens)

Dateline Felucia - Embedded with the troops on Felucia, a reporter from HoloNet News paints an intimate portrait of the men of the 212th Attack Battalion. (Obi-Wan/Cody, Waxer/Boil)

Tag - Sabine and Ketsu, bounty hunters extraordinaire, argue about how to sign their work. (Sabine Wren/Ketsu Onyo)

When I Was Your Age - Kanan, Ezra, and the fruits of a misspent youth. (Pansexual Kanan Jarrus)

Stranger Things

Date Night - Everyone and her mother seems to think they’re together and Robin’s getting pretty sick of it. (lesbian Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington)

Umbrella Academy (TV)

Iconic - When Vanya learns Klaus is gay from a magazine, she’s angry for more than just one reason. (lesbian Vanya & pansexual Klaus Hargreeves)

Feed Your Head - Three shitty things young Klaus did for drugs and one thing they did for him. (pansexual Klaus Hargreeves)

White Collar

Eyes on the Target (The Solid Ground Remix) - Peter asked Diana to keep an eye on Neal for him while he’s stuck in jail. It could be going better. (lesbian Diana Barrigan, Neal Caffrey)

Wonder Woman (2017)

After the Glory Fades (The Last Lesson Learned Remix) - Glory fades, but what truly matters remains. Diana takes a moment to remember everything her aunt taught her. (Bisexual Diana, past Antiope/Menalippe )

#my fic #pride month #agent carter #avatar: the legend of korra #Avatar The Last Airbender #black lightning #batwoman #battlestar galactica #she-ra and the princesses of power #kipo and the age of wonderbeasts #downton abbey #Wonder Woman #white collar #umbrella acedmy #stranger things #star wars #orphan black #miraculous ladybug #ultimate spider-man #dc's legends of tomorrow

[mastersalamon]

MIRAVERSE. Elements Benders.

That’s my first time when I’m doing this but I had this idea for a long time so I’m trying. This is Star Wars Rebels/ Miraverse -don’t know what it is? Shame on you!” Here you have link. @meldy-arts​ . Fanfict set in the Last Airbender universe.There is a short description how it is.

* Ezra - Nation. Water Tribes. South Pole. His parents were waterbenders so they were taken away from him when he was a kid. He is extremaly powerful but has no master. Local thief and problemaker. 

*Sabine- Nation. Earth Kingdom . Kyoshi‘s island. Not a earthbender. Wanted to fight on the war and escaped with Ketsu to do so. Escaping she brought a shame on the family and can’t go back to the clan. Hired blade, the Ghost crew member. Favorite weapon -Two short swords.

*Hera. Nation. Water Tribes. North Pole. Not a waterbender. The tribe’s laws were not for her so she left, pissing her father off and started to fight on the war, commanding a small but really fast ship Ghost stolen from the Fire Nation fleet, with her loyal polar bear dog Chopper. Favorite weapon- fists. 

*Kanan. Nation. Air Nomads. One of thelast Airbenders. He has been hiding in the Earth Kingdom, working as a smugler, then meet Hera and teamed up with her. During a small mission in the sounth one kid have stolen a freshly stolen weapon from him and the kid sounds a bit lost, and needs a master.

*Zeb. Nation. Earth Kingdom. Earth Bender. The Elite Earth Guard commander, the unit has been decimated by the Commandor Kallus elite fire unit. Found and saved by Hera and Kannan on the sea. The crew’s muscles.

*Ashoka. Nation. Air Namads. Former Air nomad, currently freedom fighter. She is looking for all the last Airbenders and everyone who can help her fight her arch nemesis The Great Fire Admiral and old -before the war- friend, Barris.

*Chopper. Nation. Water Tribes. Small, polar bear dog. Knows the ship better than anyone, exept of Hera, love to steals Ezra’s and Zeb’s shirts and stuff, especially when they are close to the South or North pole.

*Kallus.Nation. Fire Nation. Not fire bender, but really skilled warrior. Former commandor of the Fire Nation Army. Have been chasing the Ghost Crew since the Sounth Pole but after one batlle when Zeb saved his life decided to join the Resistance.  Weapon. Earh nation Spear.

*The Grand Inquisitor. Natio. Fire Nation. Fire bender. Mission was to hunt down all of the last Airbenders and kill every other benders he will meet. Can’t return to the Fire Nation until do it. After chasing the Ghost crew all around the word finally team up with them and help them to beat the fire lord.-cough*Zuko*cough. But dies soon after that. :(

*Darth Vader. Nation. Fire Nation. Crazy powerful Firebender. The great Admiral of the Fire Nation Army. Has only one mission. Counquer the World and Kill every non fire benders. For the Glory of the Fire Lord. (Admiral Zhao)

*Seventh sister Nation. Fire Nation. Strong blue Fire Bender. Crazy Fire nation assasin. The Fire Lord’s favorite assasin. The only purpose in her life is to become the Fire Lord. cough*Azula*cough.

*Fifth Brother. Nation. Fire Nation. Fire bender. The muscle guy. Seventh Sister’s loyal ‘friend’ partner in battle,

*Eight Brother. Nation. Fire Nation. Fire bender. The martial art guy. Seventh Sister’s second loyal battle ‘friend’. 

*Rex, Wolf, Gregor. Nation. Fire Nation. Old Fire nation soldiers. Deserters. Joined the Earth Kingdom’s Army and the Ghost crew.

_______________________________________________________________

After the War.

Ezra and Sabine get married, have three kids. Mira, Rona, Johan. (Maybe will be more in the future;)

Kanan and Hera get married and have three kids. Jacen, Dawn and Kai, (Also could be more;)

Zeb, Kallus, Ashoka, Rex, Wolf. Are building the Republic City.

*Most of their after war time the Bridgers have spend on the South Pole or on the Kyoski Island but with time their slowly moved to the Republic City where Hera is in charge of police and everything.

Mira Bridger. Nation-Who cares! Water bender. Really powerful. Ezra have taught her everything he knew and she left to the Republic City to work with here. On her first day on duty she have been saved by a non bender guy who soon become the new Ghost crew member and more. Then more and not so nice things started to happen but if you think that she will just leave the City only because the things are hetting worse. Think Again.

Rona Bridger. Nation. Doesn’t matter. Earth Bender. Crazy powerful. Moved to the Republic City together with Mira and her family where she meet a lot of great friends and one annoying fire bending kid.

Johan Bridger. Nation. Art. Non bender. very handly with swords and brush. In tRepublic City have meet the cutest water nation girl ever and the most cocky fire brat ever.

Mikah Coen. Nation. Non. Not bender. Live in the Republic City like ever. Gladly showed the  Bridgers where they can find the best mechnic in the city -her dad- and is spending most of the time horsing around with Rona and Race.

Helina Lassar. Nation. Water. Not bender. Born in the Republic City. It was crazy interesting to see a half water and half earth kid. She is spending most of her time with Johan, but like to spending some time with others.

Kori Kitt. Nation. Non. FUTURE Air Bender. Born in the Republic City. During a regular day of selling things in his grandmother shop he saw a girl fighting with three mob’s gangsters. He helped her and then agreed to join her crew, working for the city’s police.  

OC Characters. - In my fanfic. But not in the cannon Miraverse.

Dager Rekan. Nation Fire. Non firebender. Former mob’s hitman. Have been send to kill Mira and the others. Got his ass kicked. Got out of prison for ratting out the mob. For some reason Ezra pity the guy and want to help him. Joined the gang as the new muscles guy in the crew. Favorite weapon- Big heavy sword.

Malcolm “Race” Striker. Nation. Fire Nation. Not firebender. The fastest man alive. Have the best car in the city. Little redhead wannabe gangster brat, playboy, bad boy. Annoying, but deadly loyal, hot headed guy. The nickname dude. Made up a nickmane for anyone. Johan is JB. Helina is Helly. Mikah is  ‘WOW’ Rona is ice queen etc. Currently. Hera’s student/ assistant, kid she need to keep an eye on. Hate his name, love his car and friends, but mostly car.

Lieutenant Logen Striker. Nation. Fire. Not bender. Race’s father. Hera’s lieutenant and second in charge in the Republic City police. Ex criminal. Want to be a good father and husband. Ezra’s new drinking buddy. 

Addena Mamba. Nation. Earth. Not bender. Rona’s and Mikah greatest enemy. Hire assasin,at least ten years older than Rona. Silk haired tramp with the biggest cleavage in the City. Favorite weapon, her hips, posions and long spear.

Darth Hass. Nation. Darkness/Red Lotus. The powerful firebender who tried to kill Mira and make Ezra supper. After a long and deadly fight Ezra finally caught the guy and put him in a ice prison. Now is waiting for his minions to prepare the Republic City for his return. Beware. Be very afraid. The Darth Hass will kill everyone in the Republic City and make the Bridger Family suffer.

______________________________________________________________

Uhhhh. That’s it for now. If you want to read more check my fanfic out. Oh wait. I forget I haven’t start doing it yet. Stupid me. Anyway. I’m now trying to find a way to draw Miraverse guys like meldy is doing this (or at least kind of) and then I will probably be drawing them in the Avatar’s styl. I have other fanfic if someone want to read it. Sorry if you don’t like this what I do, but as I always say. Don’t like? Don’t hate. Be happy. Master Solomon out. Maybe the Meldy be with you.Here you have link if you don’t know where she is @meldy-arts

#miraverse #fanfict #please don't hurt me I'm trying my best.

[eyeloch]

I like the idea that Sabine’s been taught by an awful lot of different people when it comes to combat:

Her Clan trained her throughout childhood, and brought her to a high level of skill.

The Empire taught her many new styles and tried to suppress the inconvenient parts of her creativity

Ketsu and the Criminal Underworld taught her a lot more about fighting dirty - breaking fingers and windpipes when possible

Zeb taught her how to enjoy sparring again - teaching her Lasat combat forms that were a fun challenge to attempt to learn and master

Then Kanan and Ezra taught her how to use the Darksaber

#star wars rebels #sabine wren #garazeb orrelios #kanan jarrus #eye headcanon

[sophierattueba1b]

Conflict vs Non-conflict lecture notes

08/01/20

-’Only trouble is interesting’-? (Burroway 1987)

-Goal-Driven story ’Find a character like yourself, who will want something or not want something with all his heart’ (Ray Bradbury)

-’A character like yourself’- ask yourself questions, what do you want right now? what are your long term goals? Is this big enough to drive a plot? However what matters is not the size of the want, rather, the difficultly in achieving it.

I think a good example of this is the Pixar short ‘Piper’, Piper’s only wish is to eat some clams, however this is nearly impossible for her due to her inexperience and fear of the ocean. Her journey to overcome this is what makes this short story so effective. As explained by Kurt Vonnegut ‘Every character should want something, even if it’s a glass of water’, or, in this case, a clam.

-’We enjoy seeing ficitonal chracters suffer... [T]hese basic stories.... acknowledge our basic anxieties’. (Scarlett Thomas 2012)

-As soon as we add opposition we begin to make story, however this conventional structure does not inherently mean ‘conventional film’, take for example Neighbours (1952)

-Christopher Booker catergorised stories into 7 basic plots:

-Overcoming the monster: Protagonist must defeat an antagonistic force that threatens him

-Rags to riches: Poor protagonist acquires power/wealth/mate & loses it all and gains it back upon growing as a person

-The Quest: Protagonist & companions set out to acquire an important object/get to a location, facing obstacles/temptation along the way

-Voyage & Return: Protagonist goes to a strange land (physical/psychological) after overcoming threats it poses, they return with nothing but experience. Additionally, protagonist looks for adventure, but the new world becomes frightening & they start to long for home again.

-Comedy: Light & humorous with happy & cheerful ending. Central motif is triumph over adverse circumstance resulting in happy conclusion.

-Rebirth: Protagonist is a villain or unlikeable, who redeems themself over the course of the story.

-Tragedy: Protagonist is a villain who falls from grace & whose death is a happy ending

The action in a story tends to be driven by the protagonist’s goals, usually they will have a main goal that is achieved by a series of smaller goals. Therefore, plot comes from placing obstacles. However, this is a very western approach to storytelling, which typically prioritises the individual experience.

Kishotenketsu

In Asian culture, it is common for people to be taught not to prioritise themselves (this could derive from the Buddhist value of eliminating worldly desires). As a result, many examples of Asian storytelling differ in structure to western examples; conflict is not a required element. 

Kishotenketsu is a type of story written with a 4 part structure (& was originally derived from chinese poetry) & it doesn’t have a driving conflict. 

Ki: Introduction          Sho: Elaboration           Ten: Twist            Ketsu: Emphasis

Ki is similar to the exposition we would find in Freytag’s pyramid- it sets the story and introduces the plot & characters.

Next, instead of encountering complications, we move into extended elaboration (Sho).

Ten brings the elaboration to an abrupt end, with the event of a major change or twist: a reveal of new information which will usually be surprising. It may also confusingly seem unconnected to whats gone before- we may not understand at first. Its purpose is to recontextualise the story without redirecting it.

Then the incongruity is resolved in Ketsu. However, sometimes the story just ends- emphasising it’s virtues.

Kishotenketsu as a storytelling structure conveys a sense of discovery and brings a change of perspective, its not well suited for describing conflict, but is effective for telling stories that require reflection.

Example, ‘The Diary of Tortov Riddle’ (2013)

#Narrative Research

[ncfan-1]

Far From Home

Getting off of Mandalore had taken two months. Getting on track would take two years. 

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[CN/TW: Sabine’s mindset during this time period, which includes internalized victim-blaming and self-loathing.]

----------------------------

Getting off of Mandalore had taken them two months, because it was not nearly so simple as grabbing a shuttle and taking off, and Sabine had spent way too much time in denial before blaster fire and the ISC popping up at every turn had finally forced her to face the facts. At least, Sabine supposed, that was how Ketsu would have put it, and she… she wasn’t entirely wrong. It hadn’t been simple. It hadn’t been easy. It…

She rolled her helmet over in her hands, traced the outlines of the clan markings with her fingertips.

“Hey,” Ketsu called from the pilot’s chair. Sabine could feel her friend’s eyes on her. “Don’t zone out on me, okay? Sleeping’s fine—I wouldn’t mind it if you got some sleep,” she added pointedly. “But we’re both gonna have to be sharp when we drop out of hyperspace.”

Sabine nodded sharply, forcing herself to meet Ketsu’s gaze squarely, and not through the veil of her long black hair. “I’m fine.” She stared past Ketsu, to the bright blue slipstream of hyperspace. “Where are we heading?”

Ketsu’s purple eyes (Sabine had always admired their vivid color, though lately they were too piercing for comfort) narrowed. No words, but words weren’t really needed. Sabine could tell what Ketsu was thinking easily enough: ‘You should have been asking that the moment we took off, little sister.’ Yes, Sabine supposed she should have. The lapse was… She didn’t have much excuse for it. She’d just had other things on her mind.

My mother just…

“Nar Shaddaa,” Ketsu said finally. “It’s in Hutt space, so the Empire will probably think twice about following us there in force, and the Supercommandos won’t follow us at all.” She smirked. “There’s plenty of employment opportunities for girls who speak Huttese and know their way around a blaster.”

“Yeah, so long as they don’t figure out how old we aren’t.”

“Hey, nobody would think I was fourteen just by looking at me.” It was true. At a little over six feet tall, and with a deep voice and sharp, well-defined facial features, Ketsu had been looking more like a twenty-something than a teenager ever since she hit puberty. “You’re the one who’s gonna have trouble in that area, not me.”

Ketsu looked years older than she actually was. Meanwhile, Sabine was twelve, and apart from her height, she looked it. Right now, she felt it, too.

My mother just…

The words shriveled up in Sabine’s throat, and all conversation died. Maybe Ketsu felt it, too. Or maybe she didn’t. She hadn’t left anyone behind on Mandalore; she didn’t have any family. She’d told Sabine as much, when they’d first become friends—“I joined the Academy because they were offering me steady meals; nothing more complicated than that. …The classes aren’t that bad, I guess. Learning more about mixing chemicals for explosives has been fun; I bet it’s been fun for you, too!”

Ketsu joined the Academy for steady meals, for a steady roof over her head. That was a tale many of Sabine’s classmates had told; Sabine was actually something of a rarity, a student from a family and a clan still relatively intact after everything that had happened during the Clone Wars. Intact… That was a funny way of putting it now, wasn’t it.

My family just…

Maybe Sabine and Ketsu would have had an easier time getting off of Mandalore if the former had kept wearing her Academy uniform, and not significantly more conspicuous armor. The uniform might have afforded less protection, but there had been enough happening on Mandalore, enough turmoil, that two cadets in uniform roaming the streets probably wouldn’t have drawn nearly as much attention as one cadet in uniform, and another in full, very distinctive armor. Looking back, it seemed almost certain that they would have had an easier time staying under the ISC’s radar if Sabine had worn her uniform, instead of the armor she wore even now. And if she was wrong, and the ISC had cornered them anyways…

Well. Some people might say that Sabine Wren dying at the hands of a weapon she built was no more than she deserved. It would have punched through a uniform more quickly and more cleanly than it would armor. Her corpse would have been better-looking, and just as silent. Maybe her clan would have liked that better than a Sabine Wren who was still alive, a Sabine Wren who was still screaming at the top of her lungs even when the only one who listened was one of her classmates.

Sabine wiped dust off of the eye slits of her helmet. There was blood still splattered on the body of her armor; she knew even without looking that it hadn’t flaked away. The blood matched the color of her helmet, its deep burgundy color, though it stood out starkly against the rest of it, white with gold accents, as her clan wore.

“Why white?” Her aunt’s mouth twitched, though only for a moment, before she reassumed the serious-verging-on-stern mien she wore even with close kin. “Simple. White serves as perfect camouflage for arctic and sub-arctic conditions—“

“Except in summer,” Sabine’s brother broke in, grinning, “when someone won’t let us switch to green or brown.”

Their aunt silenced him with a glare, and went on, “—And it allows us to advance on targets undetected, if we are quiet enough about it. As for the accents, gold serves because it makes our clan markings clearly visible up close without being too salient from a distance. Of course, if your mother has her way, your helmet will make you rather too visible in our native conditions.” Though there was no real anger to her voice, there was an edge there, keen as a vibroblade.

From the far corner of the room, Sabine’s mother snorted as she inspected the paint job on the helmet in her hands. “We’ve had this talk before. You’re repeating yourself.”

“If you would just paint over the body of it with white,” Sabine’s aunt insisted, in an almost wheedling tone. “Or if you’d let me do it. You wouldn’t have to change the color on the clan markings; I don’t really think it’s conspicuous enough out in the snow to matter. I keep telling you—“

“And I keep telling you, nobody’s messing with the paint job on my helmet,” Sabine’s mother told her bluntly.

Sabine’s brother caught her eye and winked; she smiled back. This was an old disagreement between the two women, and though they no longer hashed it out with any real venom, they still went back to the old disagreement at the first opportunity. Sabine’s brother thought they must enjoy fighting with one another too much to give it up.

“Sabine.” At that clear call, Sabine turned to face her mother. She was holding the helmet out for her daughter to take, and her smile was cool as a balmy summer afternoon. “What once was mine is now yours. Take it, and wear it proudly as a daughter of Mandalore.”

This was the armor she had forged with her family. The only piece that had not been made specifically for her was the helmet, and that was handed down to her from her mother. Her father had done the same thing for his brother when he had forged his armor, had given him one of his old helmets. It was a tradition for their branch of the clan, Sabine guessed, or her parents were at least trying to make it a tradition.

Her family had made this armor with her, had guided her every step of the way. They’d made this armor with her, and now…

Do I even have the right to wear this anymore?

A good Mandalorian was supposed to uphold their vows. That meant honoring their obligations, and standing with their family. That was what Sabine’s family had always taught her, stressing those things over even the wearing of the armor, and proficiency in combat. Sabine was supposed to honor her obligations; once sworn, she could not be forsworn. Sabine was supposed to stand with her family, even if it meant her death. A proud daughter of Mandalore could do no less. Her honor was at stake if she failed to do these things, and her failure would mean shame for her family.

Except… Except no one had ever taught Sabine what to do if she could not fulfill one half of her vows without breaking the other. No one ever prepared Sabine for the day when honoring her obligations would mean that her hands ran red with the blood of her kin. They’d made it seem so simple, but no one had ever told her all the ways those things could conflict. No one ever told her that a day like this would come.

And no one had ever told her that rather than stand with her, her family might leave her to her fate instead.

What’s a Mandalorian who can’t go back to Mandalore?

Beneath the armor her family made, Sabine wondered if she might not just break apart like shattered glass, if she ever took it off again.

My family just…

They’d given her this armor, and she’d given them death. She gave them death, and when she tried to stop it, they…

My family just…

She picked herself up, slowly, carefully (wouldn’t want to miss any of the pieces; a weapon wouldn’t work properly without all of its pieces, would it), and sat herself down in the chair next to Ketsu’s. She said nothing, touched none of the instruments, just stared straight ahead into roiling blue hyperspace, and tried not to think about the aurorae of her home. Ketsu’s eyes burned holes into the side of her head, and Sabine didn’t turn.

“Hey, Sabine.” Ketsu’s voice didn’t run to softness very often. She might not have been brought up all her life in the warriors’ tradition, but she had the sort of hard core to her that even Sabine’s mother and aunt would have approved of. But Ketsu was like Sabine—still a kid, for everything she’d done. Her voice could soften still, grow uncertain. “Your family…”

“Ketsu, I…” I don’t want to talk about what happened.

“Just forget them,” Ketsu said bluntly, and Sabine turned and stared at her, blinking in shock. The older girl smirked humorlessly. She reached over and put her hand on Sabine’s shoulder, so gently, but still, Sabine flinched. Ketsu pretended not to notice, but Sabine could still see the hurt in her eyes, and again, she looked away. “Forget them, Sabine. If they weren’t going to stand up to the Empire even when they started using those things…” Ketsu sucked in a deep, uneven breath. “Just forget them, Sabine. It’s not like we can go back anymore, anyways. You’ll never have to see them again.”

Something like a howl, one part rage and one part despair, echoed in Sabine’s mind, reverberated in her bones, but only she could hear it. Yeah, that’s right. I can never go back there again. Because of those things I built.

“Anyway, we have to keep pressing forward.” If Ketsu didn’t sound quite as confident as her words implied, she didn’t let that stop her from going on, “If we get to be good enough bounty hunters, the Black Sun might pick us up. We’d never have to worry about the Empire catching us, then.”

Once, Sabine’s father had told her that bounty hunters tended to die young. Bounty hunters attached to a large criminal organization like the Black Sun were no exception; if anything, this rule tended to apply even more to them. ‘Bounty hunters have no honor, Sabine, and that tends to catch up to them, one way or another.’ But when given the chance to fight, her father had chosen not to. He was a warrior, and had shied away from the fight. Ketsu had stood by Sabine; she was the only one who had.

“Get some sleep.” That note of firmness in Ketsu’s voice brooked no disobedience, and Sabine didn’t have it in her to fight right now, anyways. “It’s going to be a while before we reach Nar Shaddaa, and you didn’t sleep last night—don’t think I didn’t notice.” When Sabine opened her mouth (Guess I do have a little bit of fight left in me after all), Ketsu glared and cut her off, saying, “Sabine, I really don’t like the way you start talking when you haven’t slept in a few days.”

The banked annoyance in Ketsu’s voice registered to Sabine far less than the edges of worry did, half-buried though they might be. She drew a deep breath, and nodded. “’Kay. Wake me up if you need me to take the controls for a while.”

Ketsu snorted. “I’ll be fine. Unlike someone I know, I did sleep last night. Just…” Her face crumpled a little bit, lines digging furrows in her forehead and around her mouth. “…Just get some sleep, Sabine. Please.”

As Sabine got up from the co-pilot’s chair and settled down on the cot in the back of the shuttle, her stomach began to churn, aching so badly she thought she might be sick. She curled up into a ball, gritting her teeth, angry at herself.

Forget… Yeah, it might be nice to just… forget.

Somehow, Sabine doubted she would be quite that lucky.

-0-0-0-

They had made a tidy profit selling the shuttle, once they got to Nar Shaddaa. Ketsu had grumbled about how they probably could have gotten a better deal if they hadn’t been in such a hurry to get rid of it, but personally, Sabine wasn’t willing to hold on to it longer for the sake of haggling. The sooner they got rid of this very tangible link between them and the Empire, the better. And they’d made enough money to rent out a room in a flophouse while they started looking for bounties, so what did it matter?

Sabine had never lived in a flophouse before—indeed, before those two months she spent on the run, she’d never lived anywhere but her family’s home or the Academy dormitories, both of which were rather nicer than the average home—so she guessed she’d just have to take Ketsu’s word for it when the older girl called the place “a dump, but not a completely irredeemable dump, I guess.” The fact that they only had to share the bathroom with one of their neighbors and not the whole floor apparently put it at a cut well above most of the places Ketsu had lived before entering the Academy.

“Okay, I really don’t want to know about all the places you’ve lived if this is better than most of them.”

“Yeah, you probably don’t.”

Sabine would be lying if she said her first glimpse of their new home had impressed her very much. It was a single room—there was a door off to the side that led to the bathroom they shared with their neighbor, which fortunately did lock from their side. There were two pallets rolled up in the far corner of the room, made up of cloth that had probably once been white, but was not faded to a dingy gray, and dotted with some suspicious-looking stains. The floor and walls were made of the same dull, wavy gray metal, solid enough, but unforgiving. There was no kitchen space, no refrigerator. There wasn’t any furniture, not even a chair. There wasn’t even a first-aid kit. Yeah, Sabine definitely didn’t want to know what the other places Ketsu had lived in had been like.

But… But it was a safe haven from the Empire, even if the flophouse as a whole looked like it had seen some stabbings in its lifetime. It was a place Sabine could lie down and sleep, sleep every night the way Ketsu wanted her to. It was a place where they could plot out their future, such as it was. It would do.

And when it didn’t do, when it was too plain, too hard, too cold, too empty for Sabine to bear, she went outside of the flophouse and stood at the railing overlooking one of the major traffic lanes for ships arriving on and leaving the planet. Sabine had never lived somewhere so crowded in her life—even where the Imperial Academy was located hadn’t been this crowded. Of course, nowhere in Mandalorian space boasted an ecumenopolis, a world where the entire surface was given over to a city. No matter where Sabine went, she would find no wilderness, and she would find no air clean and clear as the air where she had grown up. (She was almost glad Nar Shaddaa was as polluted as it was, even if the air was perpetually permeated with a foul, sharp chemical odor, and that the light pollution was so complete that the sky was never as dark as the night sky of her home. At least she couldn’t look up and see that the stars were different than the stars she had grown up with.)

Nar Shaddaa was crowded, polluted, cold and dirty. Sabine couldn’t walk anywhere without being stared at, without being jostled by someone. She felt constantly as though she was being watched, primarily because she was constantly being watched, even if it wasn’t by someone looking to drag her back to Mandalore for trial and execution. But when she stood at the railing, and looked out over the cityscape, she saw something that made her forget it, if only for a moment.

There were all the lights, this glittering sea of earthbound stars in a city that never slept, pinpricks of white and gold and red and blue, pink and purple and green and orange, winking and sparkling through rolling banks of smog. Sometimes, Sabine caught herself looking for constellations, and she could almost smile at herself, before she remembered where she was, and why she was there.

A week after the two girls moved in, Sabine borrowed a pair of scissors from their neighbor.

“You’re cutting your hair?” Ketsu couldn’t hide her surprise when she looked through the open bathroom door to see Sabine hacking away at her hair.

“Uh-huh.” Sabine typically wore her hair a couple of inches past her shoulders, long enough that she could braid it or knot it back, as per the Academy dress code. Back at the Academy, you either wore your hair above your chin, or long enough that it could be tied back. At the time, Sabine hadn’t liked the idea of wearing her hair so short. Of course, she hadn’t liked wearing it up, either, and upon leaving the Academy, she’d started wearing it loose whenever she could. But now, it was longer than it had ever been, nearly halfway down her back, and though her hair was just as straight and fine as it had ever been, it was starting to get annoying.

More than that, she needed a change.

She’d expected Ketsu wouldn’t cross over the threshold into the bathroom with her. Ketsu had always given Sabine her space when the latter was working on an art project, and this was pretty much the same thing. Her body was the canvas, not a wall or, you know, an actual canvas, but otherwise, there was no difference.

But Ketsu liked to be unpredictable sometimes, too.

“Let me do that.” In one swift stride, Ketsu was standing at Sabine’s side, holding her hand out for the scissors.

Sabine frowned at her, clutching the scissors to her chest. “I can do it.”

Ketsu smiled back, more gently than Sabine had seen in months. The smile softened her face and glittered in her eyes, and Sabine did feel her heart skip a beat at it, even if it did so more quietly than before all this had begun. “Do you want an even cut? It’ll be easier if someone else does it, and I promise I won’t charge.”

Inside, the part of Sabine that wanted to do this herself warred with the part of her that wanted her hair to come out looking relatively neat, and, in the end, the latter won. Silently, her jaw set, Sabine handed the scissors over to her friend. She was being ridiculous, she knew, and at least this way her hair would come out looking nice, but it still rankled to admit that she couldn’t do this herself.

“How short do you want it?” Ketsu asked curiously as she took stock of what Sabine had already cut off. “As short as mine?”

“No,” Sabine said rather too quickly, and Ketsu snickered. Ketsu kept her hair very short—usually just a short fuzz covering her scalp, though her hair had gotten longer over the last couple of months too, and more resembled a very short pixie cut nowadays. It was a good look for Ketsu, a very good look, Sabine would admit, but not the kind of look that worked for Sabine. “How about…” She pursed her lips, twining one of the few locks of hair she hadn’t gotten to yet in her hand. “…Just past my chin.”

Sabine spotted Ketsu’s nodding reflection in the mirror. “Okay, you want a bob. I can do that. Just hold still, or it might wind up looking like you tried hacking it off with a blunt knife.”

A sound that wasn’t a laugh bubbled up in Sabine’s throat. “Knowing you,” she remarked, and the jaunty note in her voice was almost sincere, “it’ll wind up looking like that anyways.”

“And just for that, I’m giving you a buzz cut now.”

“Ahh, don’t you dare!”

Ketsu laughed brightly, and for a moment, Sabine could forget where she was.

In the silence of their dim bathroom, Ketsu ran her fingers slowly through Sabine’s hair, presumably checking for tangles. Sabine had to resist the urge to lean back into the older girl, had to tell herself that she had to hold still. As Ketsu’s fingernails raked over Sabine’s scalp, a hard lump formed in her throat. Her eyes stung. Long locks of black hair lay in clumps on the floor, fluttering slightly as the vent sputtered into life. It had been so long since touch had felt so welcome.

“It’s a shame,” Ketsu murmured. “I liked your hair long.”

“I don’t, anymore,” Sabine said softly, staring down at the ground.

Eventually, Ketsu was done. Heedless of her comments on how straight Sabine’s hair was or wasn’t, Sabine looked over her new haircut in the mirror. She pressed her hands, palms flat, against the sides of her neck as she did so, wincing at how quickly her pulse raced.

The mirror was a warped, cloudy thing, the glass speckled with a thousand impurities. It did not grant the looker a clear reflection, and instead presented a blurred, indistinct image. Sabine looked at herself in the mirror, most of the hair shorn from her head, and swallowed hard.

She hadn’t been expecting this, hadn’t been thinking about it at all, but with her hair cut to her chin like this, not quite brushing her shoulders, she looked almost exactly like her mother. With the mirror’s cloudy surface blurring her features, she was almost her mother in miniature. Oh, Sabine knew the resemblance wasn’t perfect. She was too short, too slight. Her hair was finer, her eyes the wrong color. Whether because of her youth or because she’d inherited her facial structure from her father’s side of the family, her face was cast in much softer, more rounded lines than her mother’s.

But there was her mother’s face staring back at her out of the mirror, the one thing she couldn’t outrun no matter how fast she ran. Mother would be insulted if she could see this. For one wild moment, Sabine wanted to scratch her cheeks to ribbons, as if she could peel her skin away like a mask and find a new, unfamiliar face underneath. A face that didn’t belong to her, a face that wasn’t the face of a girl who had given her family death and shame, a girl whose family had cast her out.

It wouldn’t work, and Sabine’s hands stayed firmly planted on her neck.

“How does it look?”

“It… looks good. Thanks, Ketsu.”

That night, Sabine finally scrubbed the blood off of her armor. She’d let it sit there long enough, rust-red speckles on white. Much of it had already flaked off, and what remained washed off easily enough, but still, it didn’t quite look clean when she was done.

-0-0-0-

“It just figures.” Though Ketsu might have been rolling her eyes, there was no mistaking the fond amusement in her voice. “Our first big bounty, and you blow half of your share on hair dye and paint. You never change, Sabine.”

Their first two months on Nar Shaddaa, they weren’t able to pick up any bounties but those placed on small-time crooks, and accordingly, the payouts were small. More well-established bounty hunters got to the more valuable targets on the open market first, and most clients didn’t want to discuss things with a couple of kids they’d never heard of. The money they’d made selling the shuttle dwindled away (there were things Sabine and Ketsu both needed to buy, after all), and with only their meager takes to support themselves, things got tight fast. Sabine in particular was learning something Ketsu had already known from life before the Academy—what it was like to be hungry all the time (And she suspected that this feeling would persist). She missed the food she’d eaten at home. She’d be lying if she said there was a wide variety of flavors in what she’d eaten with her family, but she missed eating food that tasted of home. What food they got here wasn’t the same, and there wasn’t really enough to banish that feeling of hunger. 

Even so, when they finally made enough credits on one of their bounties that there was still plenty left over after rent had been taken care of, Sabine couldn’t help but splurge a little.

Their neighbor had had a fit when she opened the bathroom door on her side to find the bathroom flooded with the acrid, overpowering odor of hair dye, only calming down when Sabine assured her that the smell would go away given time, and that the neon pink dye in the sink would wash off. Sabine had never dyed her hair before. Doing so was against Academy dress code, and enough of her relatives thought it improper that she probably wouldn’t have done it even if she hadn’t joined the Academy. She’d wanted to dye her hair for years now, though. Black was kind of boring as far as hair colors went, and her hair wasn’t even the shiny blue-black some of her distant cousins possessed. It was just… black, plain, boring black, and Sabine could do with a change. Pink had always been her favorite color, anyways.

Next came the spray paint, and the set of oil paints she had bought.

For as long as she could remember, Sabine had loved painting. This love allegedly went further back then Sabine could remember, actually. Her brother had once told her the story of how, when she was a toddler, she’d gotten into her father’s paints and decided the walls of their home would make a wonderful canvas for pink and red and purple handprints. The story was notable primarily because, instead of being furious, their mother had only laughed before getting a bucket and water to clean it all off, but the story really was illustrative. Sabine loved to paint.

In the realm of time Sabine could remember, she’d first used watercolor paints, rather clumsily coloring in the blocky pictures in her coloring books (She wondered briefly if her parents had kept any of her old coloring books or thrown them away, but found she didn’t really want to speculate). She still liked to mess around with watercolors from time to time, but she’d never been able to get the colors to pop like she wanted them to, so she mostly painted with watercolors out of nostalgia, these days. It was calming, on occasions when she needed to calm down.

“So you like your painting, Sabine?” Her father’s voice came to her as a ghostly echo, quieter and yet more well-defined than the muffled snatches of conversation Sabine caught sometimes coming from the people living above them. “I’m glad. Alright, alright, I can see the way you’re looking at me. Yes, I would have liked one of my children to be a sculptor like me, but painting is a worthy art. More traditional, too; should please your mother, eh?” He’d winked at her, and any attempt of Sabine’s to smile at the memory just ended in a dull, ragged pain in her chest.

But memories couldn’t taint Sabine’s love of bright colors and mixing paints; she wouldn’t let them. When she’d discovered oil paints and spray paints, well, the vivid colors were nothing short of a revelation, and they were never going to stop being a source of revelations. Yes, she’d been a painting fiend since she was small. Yes, she would be a painting fiend until the day she died; Sabine figured that if she didn’t die with a blaster in hand, it would probably be a paintbrush or a bottle of spray paint instead. And no, she wasn’t going to forget about Ketsu rolling her eyes at Sabine’s sheer love of paint, only for Ketsu to later get the strangest look on her face when Sabine graffitied an alley wall, and demanded that Sabine teach her how to do that too.

It seemed bad memories would drive her to do something else, though.

All too easily could Sabine imagine the way her family would react if they could see what she was doing now. Her mother and her aunt would both be furious. Her father might be angry, too. Her more distant relations would mutter, and even her brother might be a bit offended. Dyeing her hair was one thing. Certain of her relatives might have thought it improper, but in the end, dyed hair could be hidden under a helmet. This was something else entirely.

It will still be white underneath. Do you really think you can hide it so easily? Do you really think you can erase it, just like that?

But Sabine gritted her teeth as she pulled on her safety mask and protective glasses, as she pressed a hand to the white breastplate sitting on the floor in front of her. Her family wasn’t here, and it was likely she would never see any of them again. She’d given them death and shame, and they had cast her out. Why should any of them care what she did now? Why should she care what she thought? Any irritation they evinced over what she was doing to her armor would be nothing compared to everything else that had passed between them.

First came the spray paint to serve as a base. She’d picked out a deep pinkish-maroon color for that, not quite the same color as the base color of her helmet, but close enough that most wouldn’t notice that unless they looked hard. The white was swallowed up, the gold swallowed up, and Sabine felt… She wasn’t sure what she felt. Not free. Not quite.

Once the spray paint had dried, Sabine broke out her new set of oil paints, and frowned at her newly painted armor. Just leaving it like it was, spray-painted pinkish-maroon, that wasn’t going to be good. It might not be the white and gold her clan favored, but that color… No. Sabine wasn’t going to go around wearing armor that looked like that. It was so familiar it cut, though the blade might be shaped a bit differently.

Though Sabine was slightly less eager to admit to this than her love of paints, she’d always been fond of rainbows and aurorae. She saw the latter often enough at home, ghostly green and blue and violet curtains of light that brought welcome, gorgeous illumination to a sky dimmed so long in winter. She never saw an aurora here on Nar Shaddaa; they were too close to the equator for that. That seemed like a good place to start.

Sabine swirled light, spring green and neon blue over one of her elbow guards, though the former needed a couple of coats before she stopped seeing the darker base underneath. Orange and yellow elsewhere, light pink and lavender, black and white, bright scarlet and dull, gunmetal gray. IF she was at home, anyone with eyes, down to the smallest child, could spy her coming from miles off, but she wasn’t at home anymore.

She paused when she came to her left pauldron. Instead of swirls of bright color, she painted three white lilies with deep green stems. Sabine was pretty sure she’d seen them on a class slideshow during her time at the Academy, though she couldn’t quite remember when, or in what context. She just remembered what she’d thought at the time, that her home was too cold for flowers like those.

“I like it,” Ketsu approved when Sabine showed her the new paint job on her armor. “It’s very ‘you.’ Are you going to repaint your helmet, too?” she asked, resting her hand on top of said helmet.

Sabine bit her lip. “…No, I don’t think so. Not right now.”

The helmet’s color scheme didn’t clash nearly as much with the rest of her armor now. That was something. The clan markings on her helmet were still clearly visible. That was something else.

I should just cover them up. Anyone searching for fugitive Sabine Wren probably knew what kind of clan markings would be visible on her armor. She’d already painted over the markings on the rest of her armor; now, there was just this left. Leaving the clan markings visible was just making it easier for the Empire to find her.

“Take it, and wear it proudly.”

Sabine did not wear her armor particularly proudly these days. It hadn’t actually seen that much use before she left the Academy, and she wore it now for the same reason she’d worn it then. Simply put, it was safer to have the armor on than have it off. And asides from her blasters, it was all she had of home. An exile she might have been, but hers was still the blood of Mandalore. She would have loved to forget. She knew she couldn’t.

I’m still their blood. There isn’t anything that can change that. And if Sabine couldn’t tell whether she was happy about that or not, at the very least, no one from the Empire would bother to ask, if they caught up with her.

-0-0-0-

“Ketsu, I don’t think we should go after this guy,” Sabine muttered, as she looked dubiously over the bounty intel Ketsu had picked up.

Curiously, but without any real fire, Ketsu raised an eyebrow and retorted, “And why not? The payout’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, the payout’s good, but the description says he’s on the run from the Empire. It doesn’t…” Sabine counted the number of days it had taken them to get off of Mandalore in her head, the number of times the ISC had nearly shot them both down where they stood. “…It doesn’t feel right.”

“Sabine, the Empire puts bounties out on a lot of people,” Ketsu pointed out reasonably. “Not all of them are defectors or informants or rebels. A lot of them are just common criminals who pissed off the wrong governor or admiral.” She frowned, and if Sabine wasn’t imagining the unhappiness in her frown, Ketsu certainly didn’t acknowledge it as she went on, “We’re trying to survive here. We can’t be choosy about who we go after; if we only ever went after the worst of the worst, we’d starve, and you know it. Besides, if we nab this guy, we’ll be good to go for rent for the next three months, and maybe we can stop eating freeze-dried MREs.” She leaned forward and poked Sabine in the chest with one finger. “You could stand to eat something a bit more substantial than freeze-dried MREs. You’re not looking so good right now, little sister.”

“Neither are you,” Sabine rejoined, but still, she nodded slowly. Ketsu was right. They really couldn’t afford to be choosy about who they went after, and who they didn’t. They weren’t on Mandalore anymore, and it wasn’t like Sabine could just call up her family and ask them to wire her some credits. Neither of them had any safety net if they ran out of money and couldn’t make rent on their room.

It’ll be alright, she told herself. She rested her head on Ketsu’s shoulder wearily. We just have to focus on surviving.

-0-0-0-

In the end, Ketsu must have taken that phrase, that ‘focus on surviving’ bit more to heart than Sabine, because when Ketsu left, it took nearly a week for it to sink in for Sabine that Ketsu wasn’t coming back.

Their latest job had gone bad. Their client hadn’t told them all the details, had turned out to be much more dangerous than either Sabine or Ketsu could have realized when they first got in contact with her, and oh, Sabine should have realized something was wrong the moment the client offered to pay them up front. She’d heard it from the few older bounty hunters who were willing to talk to them, it usually wasn’t a good sign if the client was paying you before you nabbed the target, but they were hungry, and hunger had made them more desperate, and more trusting, than was wise.

Ketsu had split when things went south, taking the money with them, and even as Sabine had to run, she still kept expecting her friend to show back up. Still kept waiting to hear Ketsu’s laugh, to turn and smile to see her jump down from a fire escape and tell her she’d found a place where they could hide while they formulated their next move. She wanted that, wanted to believe it would happen.

But it wasn’t. Ketsu had left her holding the bag, left Sabine to deal with their very angry client and her very angry goons, and now Sabine found herself taking what little money she had and doing much the same as she’d done a year ago: getting off of Nar Shaddaa as fast as she possibly could. Fleeing a planet was something that was becoming much more familiar to her than it ought to have been, and this time, she couldn’t even claim the desire to spare her clan any more misery than she’d already brought them as an excuse.

She found passage on a freighter whose pilot wasn’t interested in asking questions, just in getting his shipment of spice to the next port of call. So long as Sabine agreed to help with the maintenance of the ship while they were in transit, she didn’t have to pay much to stay on the ship until he got to his destination and could drop her off.

Mercifully, the pilot wasn’t too interested in asking questions, either. Sabine didn’t think she could have answered any question he gave her, even such an innocuous one as asking after her age. She couldn’t answer questions right now. She could barely even bear to talk.

Is this all there is? she wondered one night, holed up in the little room where she, well, didn’t sleep. Not much. She mostly lied awake on her bunk, listening to the steady hum of the engine and holding her helmet close to her chest. Is there no one I can trust? Her heart hammered painfully in her chest, bile rising in her throat even she clamped her mouth down over a scream. Am I just… Am I just supposed to be alone?

Ketsu had just…

Why, after everything they had gone through on Mandalore, after Ketsu had been the only person who would stand by her, would Ketsu just leave her?! Why… I thought… I thought she really…

Sabine stared up at the dark ceiling, clutching her helmet to her chest like a small child would a stuffed animal or a favorite blanket. Maybe… Maybe she should have been expecting this. They had to survive, and Ketsu might have just thought that that would become impossible if she didn’t leave Sabine holding the bag. Who knows, maybe Sabine would have done the same thing to Ketsu if their positions had been reversed, or if they had run into another bad spot somewhere down the line. How was she supposed to know otherwise?

Maybe this really was all there was for her. She’d betrayed her family long before they betrayed her, after all. If betrayal was going to follow her wherever she went, maybe it would be better if she was just alone. If she didn’t come to care about anyone, and there was no one who cared about her. Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

Sabine turned her face to the wall. At some point during the night, she finally fell asleep. When the morning came, she’d pretend she hadn’t heard screaming while she dreamed, and she would pretend that she hadn’t woken up to find her cheeks damp to the touch.

-0-0-0-

Sabine still continued to find work as a bounty hunter as she flitted from spaceport to spaceport, planet to planet. She was also discovering that the time the Academy had taken teaching her languages (Huttese, Shyriiwook, Rodian, Aqualish, and Binary, among others) in preparation for a “glorious” career in espionage definitely came in handy when bounties were thin on the ground. For all that many people turned their nose up at a translator with no license, there were plenty more who couldn’t afford a licensed translator’s fees, or could but didn’t hire one owing to their activities requiring a somewhat more discreet translator. Those who required the services of a discreet translator tended to care rather less about the fact that their translator was barely a teenager than those who didn’t.

Leaving Hutt space meant traveling to worlds where the Empire tended to have a presence, even if only a token presence, even if the Outer Rim was dotted with sparsely populated backwaters whose only point of interest was the local crime syndicate’s hideout. Traveling to worlds where the Empire had a presence, even only a token presence, meant keeping her head down and staying away from any official-looking buildings, or any major ports of call, for that matter. It meant keeping her mouth shut when she saw stormtroopers hassling civilians, when she saw somebody being carried off in binders, when she had to reporters spewing propaganda on the HoloNet.

A good Mandalorian was supposed to respect strength. Only the strongest could rule, or so her mother had told her. But Sabine had never felt less like a Mandalorian, never felt less like herself, when she sat there, watched the Empire go about the business of enslaving the galaxy and oppressing its people, and did nothing. Even on Mandalore, she had done something, even if she had accomplished approximately nothing in the process. But now?

What am I supposed to do, anyways? I already tried fighting the Empire, and look where it got me. Look at everything I lost trying to fight the Empire. I fought and lost. I tried to make up for what I’d done, but I couldn’t even do that. What can I do now that won’t just get me the same results it got me then?

But still, something in her blood began to burn when she watched, and was yet silent.

Sabine Wren was a drifter, a Mandalorian without a clan, without a people to call her own. She moved through the stars, through the solar systems, through the spaceports and the streets, walked among the peoples of the galaxy, but they all seemed very far away. She was right there with them, walking the same streets and traveling down the same hyperspace routes, but they were all very remote, very separate. It was almost like she was a ghost passing through the realms of the living. No one paid her much mind unless she did something so attention-grabbing that they had to turn and look. Otherwise, they just ignored her.

It was for the best, she supposed. She was a fugitive from the Empire, and had no clan to protect her if things went wrong. How could she trust anyone who approached her, anyways? Everyone was just trying to survive out on the Outer Rim, and if that meant turning in a fugitive or ditching said fugitive when associating with her got to be too dangerous, who knew what anyone in that situation would do? Not Sabine, certainly. Her judgment in such matters was… spotty.

She was a Mandalorian who had broken her vows; she was forsworn. She couldn’t stand by her family; she had no family that would acknowledge her now, and her hands were red with their blood anyways, so what could she have said to any of them, if she saw them again? What was there left to do, but survive?

Sometimes, Sabine thought of other Mandalorians in the not-so-distant past who had done as she had, had broken their vows. The civil wars hadn’t been that long before her time; in a way, it hadn’t really stopped until the Siege was lifted at the end of the Clone Wars, and the Empire took control.

“I remember when the wars ended, Sabine. I was a young woman then, little more than a child. Peace-loving Satine Kryze prevailed, though I doubt she would have done so without the Jedi’s aid. She might have been trained as a warrior, but she lost her spirit for fighting early on, and her clan was decimated during the wars. Without the Jedi, she would have died young, just as her parents did.”

“…Mother… Aren’t we supposed to be loyal to whoever wins once the war’s over? …Mother?”

“Don’t look at me like that, child; I’m not angry. You are very young; I don’t expect you to know the specifics. If… If the Duchess had remembered our ways, perhaps we would have sworn allegiance to her, and troubled her no more. But she had forsaken everything. She wanted to make us weak, Sabine. She wanted us to turn our backs on everything that makes us what we are, and why? Because she lost people she cared for? So did we all. Not all of us responded by laying down our arms and forsaking everything our parents taught us. We had to fight against that. We could never tolerate a ruler such as her.”

And from that, had sprung Death Watch. Sabine knew the story well. Both sides of her family, her mother and her father’s clans, were aligned with House Vizsla; even those who were not active members of Death Watch still agreed with and supported what Death Watch represented. If the New Mandalorians, led by Satine Kryze, would provide no legitimate outlet for the warrior culture of Mandalore, Death Watch was not going to be discouraged by that. They would not disarm, and neither would they flee. They would stay and fight, even if they had to fight on the periphery, even if they had to abandon all codes of conduct in how they carried out their new, covert war.

Satine Kryze had lost so much to war that she deemed traditional Mandalorian culture worthless, and tried to rebuild Mandalorian culture from the ground up to be something more peaceable. That was what Sabine had been told. And eventually, Satine had been deposed, and killed. The exact circumstances of her overthrow and death tended to vary, depending on who was giving an explanation. Some named Satine Kryze ‘martyr’, others ‘coward’ and ‘murderer.’ It was very confusing, and Sabine had never been able to figure out which version, if any, was the truth. About the only thing everyone had agreed on was that she was weak. She let her grief turn her away from everything she had been raised to respect, and she couldn’t even maintain a successful regime.

Death Watch refused to give up their lives as warriors, but in the process they became a terror to their own people. Her mother, too. Sabine knew that. She would never have said it to her mother’s face—she wasn’t sure what she feared more, that her mother would shout, or that she’d just crumple—but from what Sabine had learned at the Academy, as far as she could trust what she’d learned at the Academy, it sounded like Death Watch had been little more than a bunch of armed thugs at times.

But Satine had watched the old ways ruin her life and destroy nearly everything she held dear. But Sabine’s mother and everyone else who joined or supported Death Watch had been told to their faces that they must give up everything they had been raised to value. What could you do, when the walls were closing in, and the only way out was to shed bits and pieces of what you’d been raised to treasure, one at a time, until there was little to nothing left?

At least they did something. What am I doing? Just surviving, she supposed. Funny how surviving didn’t really feel like living.

-0-0-0-

It just figured that it would be one of her translator jobs that got Sabine into deep trouble, rather than a bounty hunting gig.

The job offer came from someone who was trying to negotiate a price on spare ship parts with an Aqualish mechanic. While said mechanic understood Basic just fine, she apparently couldn’t speak more than about five words of it, which would make communication with someone who didn’t understand Aqualish difficult. Hence the need for a translator.

Sabine was approached about a week after she got into the city. This world was a quiet one, and gossip told her that local law enforcement tended to come down extremely hard on any bounty hunters they caught operating in the area, so she started putting out that she could serve as a translator instead. Her prospective client was a human man, about ten years older than Sabine, or perhaps a few years older than that. With brown hair, brown skin, and green-blue eyes, he would have been perfectly nondescript if not for the armor on his right arm and shoulder, but still, when he approached her with his offer, Sabine almost didn’t take it. There was something… shifty about him. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t tell Sabine his name—that was actually pretty normal for the kinds of translation jobs she took—and it wasn’t the normal “I’m a smuggler who’d really like to stay out of jail” kind of shiftiness, either. There was just something off about him, something fake, like his face was a mask concealing something very old and very dangerous underneath.

But in the end, her stomach wound up doing the decision-making for her—her client said they’d go to a nearby diner to hammer out the details if she accepted, and he’d offered to pay for her meal. Sabine hadn’t had a hot-cooked meal out of a restaurant any nicer than a filthy hole in the wall since… She couldn’t really remember. Maybe on Nar Shaddaa. Maybe on Mandalore.

And perhaps even a month ago, she would have ignored the dull ache in her stomach and refused him. But a month ago, she hadn’t been feeling tired all the time, hadn’t felt weak all the time. A month ago, her fingernails were just starting to soften, were just starting to dull, and now, they felt like they’d split if she applied even a little pressure to them. Anemia ran in the family. At home, they tested her fairly regularly, but Sabine had been taught which signs to look out for; she didn’t need a doctor to know that steady food was the best cure available for what was ailing her. She’d take the job.

Of course the job went wrong. Of course it did. Sabine had ignored her own better judgment taking it, after all; that was what she got for letting her stomach do the talking for her. But then, Sabine didn’t exactly expect ‘translation job gone wrong’ to translate to an ambush by the local Imperial garrison, followed by a speeder chase, a foot chase, and a shootout in what she suspected was a strip club (she hadn’t really been paying a whole lot of attention to the dancers, but when she spotted one of them she couldn’t help but stare, just a little bit), all culminating in a fire fight in an open market. That really seemed more like the sort of thing that would happen to a bounty hunter, not a translator.

“You know, for somebody who said you didn’t want anything to do with this,” the man—no, Kanan; he’d told her his name around the third time a stormtrooper shot at their stolen speeder—called out, “you sure don’t need a lot of encouragement to open fire on stormtroopers.”

He sounded irritated, Sabine thought. He’d told her to run the moment they got to the market and a few more escape routes opened up, but Sabine did not run (she shoved away thoughts of Nar Shaddaa, thoughts of Mandalore), and she really didn’t appreciate being told to run by anyone. So she bristled and snapped, “Maybe I don’t like being shot at.”

From behind their makeshift barricade (a fruit stall that was starting to look more like a sieve), Kanan dropped down to replace the energy cap in his blaster. He paused before resuming fire, raising an eyebrow at Sabine and snorting. “Yeah, kid, I kinda noticed that. But this? This is the Empire we’re talking about, not some drunks in the cantina or a smuggler’s goons.”

“And maybe I don’t like the Empire, either.” One of her shots flew wide of its target, and Sabine snarled. That meal in the diner earlier had definitely left her feeling better, but she was still weaker than she ought to have been, and her aim was suffering for it. At least the troopers’ numbers seemed to be thinning. And at least their aim is even worse than mine is right now. If these guys were the ISC, they’d already be scraping what was left of us off of the pavement.

Kanan shook his head irritably. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe you’re in over your head? You sure you wanna pick a fight with the Empire?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing right now?!”

“It’s different for me.”

“I fail to see how!”

“Look, kid. Sabine,” he amended, putting a hand on her shoulder even as he continued to rain blaster fire on the troopers. Sabine tried not to flinch. “Once you start fighting the Empire, really fighting, you can’t ever stop. You start really fighting the Empire, and they’ll start coming for you.” There was no trace of irritation or sarcasm in his voice now, no trace of the mocking humor she’d heard while they were being chased. He was deadly serious now, and there was a heaviness in his eyes that probably could have sobered the biggest drunks back on Nar Shaddaa. “There’s no turning back, once you decide to fight.”

Sabine sucked in a deep, shuddering breath, like the first breath a castaway made when surfacing after nearly drowning. She felt like the air would run out at any second. “I want to fight. I don’t know how.” The words were spilling out uncontrollably. Her voice was cracking. Sabine was grateful for her helmet; she didn’t want him to see her face. “Fighting the Empire hasn’t gone so great for me,” she said lamely, and there was her shame again, digging talons into her flesh.

Kanan looked at her strangely, silent for what under scrutiny felt like an eternity. When finally he spoke again, he sounded oddly brittle, like glass just before it broke. “You really mean that? All of it?”

“Yes.” No hesitation. She couldn’t hesitate now. Not anymore.

“Then when I make a break for it, you’re with me. I’ve got somebody you need to meet.”

-0-0-0-

That ‘somebody’ was one Hera Syndulla, Twi’lek captain of a modified freighter known as the Ghost. Kanan had called ahead of time, but neglected to mention their newest crewmate’s exact age. Hera had glared daggers at Kanan, who threw his hands up and smiled sheepishly back, trying to talk her down with an almost playful air about him. Sabine stared. She couldn’t help it.

Hera shot one last glare at Kanan and turned her attention to Sabine. When their eyes met, she smiled gently, almost apologetically. “Sabine…” Hera had a smooth, sweet voice that reminded Sabine irresistibly of an older girl she had known growing up, and something inside of her ached miserably to hear it. “I appreciate your willingness to help us. I really do. But…” Hera’s brow furrowed, her lekku shivering.

Kanan turned and looked at his captain, eyes narrowed slightly. “Sabine, you said you’d fought the Empire before.” Sabine couldn’t help but notice that his eyes were still locked on Hera’s face, even as he was talking to her. “You mind telling us what you meant by that?”

Suddenly, Sabine’s mouth felt as dry as the desert stands on Mandalore. She couldn’t… She didn’t want them to know. I don’t have to tell them everything. I don’t. It’s not like they’re telling me everything. “I used to be an Imperial cadet. I… left my world’s Academy.”

“Which I guess explains why you started shooting at those troopers before I did,” Kanan inferred, grimacing.

Meanwhile, Hera nodded firmly, a sheen like ice glossing her bright green eyes. “So what you’re telling me is that joining us won’t make you any more of a fugitive than you already are, am I right?”

“You’d be right, yeah,” Sabine replied, aiming for flippant and landing on flat.

Hera favored her with a confident smile that had beneath it the sort of steel Sabine’s aunt and mother would have approved of. “Then welcome to the team.”

-0-0-0-

This was not a ship of two—or three, Sabine soon discovered. Including herself, the Ghost was a ship of five. Besides Kanan and Hera, there was a Lasat named Zeb (it took Sabine a moment to recognize his species, but when she did, her stomach began earnestly trying to crawl up her throat and out her mouth), and a frankly vicious astromech named ‘Chopper.’ Like, beyond vicious. As in ‘giggled maniacally when their first mission together required him to blow up a ship’ levels of viciousness.  Apparently, he’d been Hera’s since she was a young child. Sabine wondered if Hera had deliberately programed Chopper to be this way, or if that was just the way his personality had naturally developed after a few years with no memory wipes. She couldn’t decide which answer would have been more disturbing.

The Ghost, Sabine was pleased to be able to confirm, was a ship of rebels. Small-time rebels, maybe, but you had to start somewhere, it was better than going back to doing nothing, and Hera said that eventually things would be a bit larger-scale. Figured it would be Hera who said that. Kanan might have been the squad leader on the ground, but it was pretty clear who was really in charge here. It was kind of hard for Sabine to miss on whose word the Ghost’s world turned.

It was easy for Sabine to keep to herself, so long as she wasn’t loud. She’d been given the sole empty crew quartering, and the room, while not large, wasn’t so small that she would have needed to step outside just to feel like she wasn’t suffocating. The rest of the crew generally kept to themselves when they weren’t on a mission or being briefed for a mission. Even when Hera needed somebody or everybody to man stations or perform ship maintenance, there wasn’t a whole lot of idle chatter. Kanan and Hera were the only ones who had a whole lot to do with each other—and Sabine was going to pretend, hopefully until she managed to actually expunge it from memory, the few times she’d spotted one of those two enter the other’s quarters at night, and spotted them leaving again early the following morning.

If the others (mostly) kept to themselves, then Sabine was more than happy to keep to herself too. Somehow, she doubted she’d be with these guys forever. They’d die, or she’d die, or they’d leave her. Seemed pretty clear-cut to Sabine.

A month into this, and Sabine managed to give away more than she meant to. She couldn’t quite remember the lead-up, not in words; blank rage had managed to open up a hole in her memory. It was one of the few times she ate breakfast in the common area instead of in her room (Or outside, if they were planetside instead of flying). Beyond that, she didn’t remember much.

Logically, she knew Zeb had had no idea she was actually a Mandalorian, and hadn’t spoken with any real malice. Logically, Sabine also knew that Zeb was probably strong enough to crush her ribcage the way she’d crush a tin can under her foot, and that maybe picking a fight with him wasn’t such a good idea. And yet, when he made some crack about whoever she’d stolen her armor off of having been unimpressive to have been taken out by someone her age, she still tried to punch him in the face.

Sabine’s fist never actually connected. Kanan had realized what she was going to do before she actually did it, and grabbed her shoulder before she could do anything more than jump out of her seat. That hand on her shoulder anchored her back to herself, and she didn’t lunge forwards, but still, she glared, her breath whistling from between gritted teeth. “I didn’t steal this armor. I made it with my family!” she ground out, her arms fairly shaking with sudden rage.

She couldn’t see Kanan’s face, though he pushed her back down into her seat rather more gently than he could have. Zeb looked more bemused than offended, Hera more stunned than angry. Chopper just waved his manipulator arms and said something to the effect of “Pass the oil!”

Later, when she had had time to cool off, Sabine apologized to Zeb, who just shrugged and told her not to worry about it. Still, that sudden surge of anger had managed to surprise even Sabine. It certainly wasn’t the first time someone had assumed she’d stolen her armor. There’d been plenty of people over the past two years who assumed that ‘bounty hunter’ automatically equated to ‘armor thief.’ Hell, it wasn’t like Sabine had ever bothered disabusing them of that notion; she couldn’t take the risk of them putting things together if they knew that particular fact.

But this time had been different; this time, Sabine wanted them to know the truth. Maybe it was just because, after a month of reasonably steady meals, her anemia symptoms were starting to clear up, and her strength was starting to come back. Maybe the weakness had been on her longer than she thought, and it had started in her heart. Maybe that was all there was to it.

(And still, she wasn’t sure if she even had any right to wear the armor anymore. Maybe it was a kind of theft to still wear it after she’d hurt her family so, after they had turned their backs and cast her out. But it was all she had of home, and it had been freely given when it was made, so she wore it still.)

Not long after that incident, Sabine got another surprise, and whether it was more pleasant than the last, she really couldn’t say.

Hera did not say ‘trust-building exercise,’ though Sabine could definitely tell she was thinking it; that encouraging smile and that hopeful gleam in her eyes fairly screamed Hera’s intentions. That was probably for the best—if Hera had actually said ‘trust-building exercise’ instead of just thinking ‘trust-building exercise’, there was no way Sabine would have gone along with this. As it was, she nearly didn’t go along with it just with Hera merely thinking ‘trust-building exercise.’

But Hera had managed to hit on Sabine’s greatest weakness. Well, maybe not her greatest weakness, exactly. It was her greatest weakness after explosives, art and weapons, so more like her fourth-greatest weakness: languages. Sabine had first come into contact with Kanan (and by extension, the rest of the Ghost crew) as a translator, after all; Hera would have known about her newest crewmate’s facility for languages. Hera’s offer for Sabine was that, in their downtime, she’d teach Sabine Ryl, if Sabine would teach her Mando’a.

“You’re already serving as a translator here, and it would be good for you to know Ryl if we’re ever in a situation where we need to deal with Twi’leks and I can’t be involved.”

“And you want to learn Mando’a because…”

“Well, we may need to deal with Mandalorians too, and if you’re not available, it would be good to have someone else who speaks the language.”

Sabine didn’t mention that both races involved tended to teach their children Basic as a second language alongside their cradle tongue. She didn’t mention that if they ever dealt with Mandalorians in the future, it would probably be better if she wasn’t around, because her presence would probably make any deal break down fast. Instead, she let her curiosity do the talking for her, and nodded. It all seemed innocuous enough.

They didn’t have a whole lot of downtime, but when they did, they monopolized the dejarik table (much to Kanan and Chopper’s disappointment, but they got over it) for use in language lessons. Sabine taught Hera the only way she knew how, the way she had been taught in the Imperial Academy: declension and conjugation and sentence structure and pronunciation guides and vocabulary lists. Hera took a more naturalistic approach, apart from also employing vocabulary lists, more the way Sabine had watched older cousins teach their children to talk.

The first word Hera taught Sabine was ‘freedom.’

The first word Sabine taught Hera was ‘home.’

Progress was… Well… they were making progress. Slowly. Though it irked her to have to admit it, Sabine was much better at learning languages than she was at teaching them. She had a hard time guessing what direction to take next, what was appropriate for a beginning student, and how best to mix different areas of study.

There was also the matter of the particular dialect of Mando’a she had chosen to teach Hera. Sundari Standard was the dialect deemed most appropriate to teach outsiders; it was the most widely used dialect of Mando’a spoken by Mandalorians. The dialect Sabine had chosen to teach Hera instead was the dialect her clan spoke, the one she had learned from her cradle. That dialect was not as widely spoken, and was generally considered one of the most difficult for outsiders to learn, being more conservative and having fairly few Basic loanwords. Communities who spoke it tended to be hostile to the idea of linguistic evolution, with the result that the dialect sounded rather archaic, even to other Mandalorians. Sabine’s dialect and Sundari Standard were mutually intelligible… for the most part. If Hera encountered a Mando’a speaker using Sundari Standard, she’d probably be able to hold a conversation with them, but there was another problem, in that using Sabine’s clan’s dialect would give away immediately that she’d been taught Mando’a by a member of House Vizsla. Any Mandalorian not aligned with House Vizsla would probably take exception to that. Honestly, some Mandalorians who were aligned with House Vizsla might take exception to that.

It didn’t occur to Sabine until too late that it probably would have been better to teach Hera Sundari Standard. She’d just gone with the dialect she was raised with instinctively, and to be honest, she’d always had trouble with Sundari Standard; when she took exams at the Academy and had a choice about whether to use Sundari Standard or Basic, she almost always went with Basic, because her Sundari Standard grammar tended to be a bit lacking, and she didn’t want points docked for clerical errors. Oh, well. It wasn’t like she could just switch dialects this far in.

The oddest thing was, Hera basically admitted the same thing to Sabine about the dialect of Ryl she was teaching her. “My clan’s dialect is usually considered a bit… difficult.” She had laughed ruefully as she explained, “I’ve been trying to teach you the version for speakers who don’t have lekku or whose lekku are damaged, but there was never a reason for me to know it when I lived on Ryloth, and, well, I’m starting to think any Ryl speaker is going to think you learned the language from a HoloNet translating engine.”

“Hera, I can do this.”

“I’m not questioning you; I’m questioning me.”

This was the, maybe the seventh or eighth lesson they’d met up for. Outside the ship, night had fallen over the city where they were docked, and inside the ship, Kanan and Zeb were asleep, and Chopper was… somewhere. The language lesson was doubling as Hera and Sabine’s watch shift, and they sat in a shallow pool of light illuminating the dejarik table.

“So, is my pronunciation still awful?” Hera asked Sabine wryly, as they pored over their datapads.

Sabine hunched her shoulders. “I never said it was awful, Hera,” she muttered, not quite meeting her eyes—she had been thinking it, even if she hadn’t said it. “I just said it needed work.” When Hera raised a tattooed eyebrow at her and smiled slyly, Sabine went on defensively, “Really, Hera.” And still ignored the fact that she’d been thinking it. “And honestly, your pronunciation isn’t as bad as mine used to be when I was little. My mother used to…” She trailed off, her shoulders sagging. Her mother used to laugh at her and play a game where she pretended she didn’t know what Sabine was saying, coming up with increasingly ridiculous interpretations until she finally got the pronunciation right. But that had been a long time ago.

“Sabine…” Hera’s hand on her shoulder was a gentle one, and her voice soft and sad, but still, Sabine stiffened, drew up a little, lifted her chin and forced herself to meet Hera’s eyes. Forced herself not to shy away when she saw a little bit of the steel she’d seen before in Hera’s eyes, instead of just her mouth. “Sabine, I don’t know how you came to be out here by yourself at your age, away from your family. But whatever it was—“ her voice hardened, the steel sharpening out soft edges “—it was not your fault.”

Sabine wanted to push her away. She wanted to leave, and go back to her room, or just leave the ship entirely. She wanted to scream “How do you know that?!” at the top of her lungs, and she could feel those words tattooing themselves on her soft, weak heart even now. She sat very stiff and very still and very silent, staring at Hera with her hands clenched on her knees, and her mouth clamped shut.

Hera gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “This ship is home for me.” Her eyes crinkled upwards as her smile widened slightly. “It’s home for Chopper, and Kanan, and Zeb. What I hope, is that in time it will be home for you as well.”

The home of Sabine’s heart was far, far away from here. Her last memory of home was of snow gently falling from the sky, and her brother waving to her as she boarded the transport that would take her to the shuttle that would take her back to the Academy for the next term. The sky was a soft, pearly gray, and the wind sang a low, quiet song through the trees. But home was far away, home was gone, and Sabine didn’t tell Hera any of that. Instead, she made a motion with her head that certainly wasn’t a nod, and they went back to the night’s lesson.

------------------

If anyone is curious as to why I made Sabine so young when she left the Academy (and I'm aware that future episodes might blow this out of the water), I'd be happy to explain in more detail, but in short, the timeline works out best for me this way.

#Star Wars: Rebels #Fanfic #Spoilers #Sabine Wren #Ketsu Onyo #Kanan Jarrus #Hera Syndulla #Triggers #Warnings inside #Ketbine #Not a whole lot of focus on the Ketbine for a couple of reasons #Also: implied Kanera

[dubstepkazoo]

So I recently finished watching Durarara!!x2.

Yes, I really didn’t get to it until just now.

The original Durarara!! was a fresh, unique anime that improved considerably on the source material by adjusting the pacing, adding entirely new scenes, changing the order in which scenes were presented, and doing a whole slew of other things to produce an exciting story about gang violence and twisted love in a city that’s only a hop, skip, and a jump away from my university. Now, these improvements were CRUCIAL. Durarara has a TON of characters, and it was important to give the viewer time to get to know them, as well as give them time to establish a meaning for themselves and be relevant.

Durarara!!x2 tries to achieve the same result without using the same methods.

But before I talk about that, I want to talk about something I haven’t seen anyone else talk about regarding this series. Ever wonder why the three seasons of DRRR2 are called “Shou,” “Ten,” and “Ketsu?” Well, the standard essay-writing structure taught in Japanese schools is called “ki-shou-ten-ketsu,” just like how American schools teach “intro, body, body, body, conclusion.” The “ki” (presumably represented by the first season of DRRR) is the intro as we know it. The “shou” is a development of the thesis, building upon and substantiating it at the same time. The “ten” is the twist, coming at the topic from a completely different angle and putting your own personal spin on it - for example, proof by contrapositive could happen here. Finally, the “ketsu” is the wrap-up, tying the rest of the essay up into a neat little bow and making the threads of logic all come together. So as part of my discussion of this anime, I think it might be interesting to look at it from this perspective.

Technical details first. The animation isn’t bad, and the few serious fight scenes look good enough. The character models, though, could use some work. They often suffer from Tim Burton Syndrome, especially Egor and Rokujou. As for the music, the only track that really stood out was Ketsu’s OP, which kicks three and a half different kinds of ass (compared to the five kinds of ass kicked by the first season’s OPs and Trust Me). And the voice acting, naturally, was great. What can you expect from a cast that contains both Daisuke Ono and Jun Fukuyama?

If you thought the original DRRR had a lot of characters, you ain’t seen nothing yet. DRRR2 introduces tons of new characters, brings back ones that were retired in the first season (Haruna and Takashi), and even shows us some that were only alluded to before (Izumii). Easily more than the first season’s entire cast. Who, by the way, still stick around. 36 episodes is just not enough to develop all of them adequately and make them all satisfying. And on top of that, some of them are given focus they don’t need. Akabayashi is given an entire flashback episode in Ten, but he’s completely inconsequential throughout the entirety of Ketsu - despite the fact that he’s in its OP. Heck, Ruri Hijiribe remains an important figure throughout Shou, but doesn’t matter at all from then on. She doesn’t even get any screentime in Ketsu except for one short scene. Rather than see the characters for who they are, you start to see them only for what faction they’re in. Where’s this guy from, who’s he working for? What he wants or what he’s like tend not to be explained.

As for the story, Izaya’s plot to throw Ikebukuro into chaos continues. Shou actually opens with a four-episode adaptation of the fourth novel in the series, which actually serves as a very nice reintroduction. It’s been years and years since the first season, and the viewer needs time to readjust to Durarara’s peculiar storytelling. It depicts a (relatively) inconsequential sequence of events told completely out of order. Our old friends get some decent action in, and a few new characters are given some time to shine. It was very welcome.

Anyway, throughout Shou and Ten, various factions gain considerable power. We meet the Toramaru gang, Mikado goes completely off his rocker, the Blue Squares come back, and even the yakuza enter the fray. These two cours create a very distinct feeling that Ikebukuro is reaching its boiling point. Shou provides a steady influx of new info and new gangs to add to the first season’s introductions, and Ten shows us how human traffickers and yakuza throw their wrenches into the youth-dominated underbelly of the city. How, then, does Ketsu tie everything together?

Poorly.

With so many complicated factions and motivations already, it tries to introduce even more characters at the latest hour, seeming to forget that it already has dozens of pre-established characters to keep track of. Remember Sloan? Yeah, me neither. He got one scene in the first episode of Ketsu. So much for his character arc. Mikage? Why should I care about her now when she’s never mattered before? Why should I get attached to Kujiragi if I’ve never seen her before? Ketsu seems to waste too much time on more setup and forget that it has a Byzantine story to bring a satisfying conclusion to. In fact, the big climax to the series starts with a minor character deciding to begin preparing for his endgame. That’s how bad it is. It’ll ignore groups of characters for entire episodes at a time. Something important happens for Celty halfway through Ketsu, but she remains ignored until the very last episode, where she acts as a shameless deus ex machina because Narita couldn’t figure out how to write himself out of the clusterfuck he had created. Remember her scene at the Dollars meeting in the first season? That was awesome. But her big scene here in Ketsu is completely disappointing. To add insult to injury, the series concludes with a perfect return to the status quo, resetting the game board completely. Everyone’s progress toward their goals (except maybe the high schoolers) goes back to zero. Really makes you wonder what you sat through 61 episodes for.

Finally, there’s the theme of twisted love. This comes across loud and clear in the first season and the LNs, but it’s hard to find in DRRR2. Shinra and Celty get a little development on this front, and Seiji and Mika reiterate some of the same points they made in the first season, but other than that, examples of this theme are few and far between. I guess there’s Kasuka and Ruri in Shou, but they only matter for a few episodes, and the assertions made by their relationship end up not mattering in the bigger scheme of the series. In this aspect, the series lost quite a bit of scheme. I foresaw Shinra’s climactic scene from halfway through Ketsu. Come on, guys.

Okay, so I’ve been ripping on this quite a bit. I love ripping on things. But I also found a great deal of enjoyment in DRRR2. Justice porn is abundant, and there’s plenty of DRRR’s special brand of humor to be found. Even the fight scenes are exciting.

My final score for Durarara!!x2 is a five out of ten.

Shou supplemented the first season decently. Ten gave a cute new perspective on Ikebukuro. But Ketsu dropped the ball. It was too focused on being more Durarara, forgetting to be a good conclusion to a long and complicated series.

That said, there’s plenty to enjoy. Shizuo and Varona had a good dynamic going on. Rokujou was a joy to watch. Walker and Erika were hilarious as usual, despite their god-awful taste in LNs.

I believe this anime would have been better if it had been longer. It needed time to develop its army of characters satisfactorily. Some were scrutinized and then thrown away, others were kinda there the whole time without mattering until their big scene in which you were supposed to care about them, and still others were tossed in at the eleventh hour. In order to make this series better without making it smaller-scale, it needed more time. But hey, this is what you get when you try to adapt eight LNs in three cours.

#durarara!!x2 #full anime reviews

[ambiguityisnoonesfriend]

Star Wars Rare Pairs 2017

Dear Rare Pairs Creator,

I am so excited, you have no idea. I love all the iterations of the characters and relationships I’ve requested, and can’t wait to see what you’ve created for me!

Note: Some of this is copied from previous letters, and I am also happy with what I asked for in my previous letters. Think of the prompts as vague suggestions to get your ideas flowing. As a rule, if you write the relationships I requested, I’m going to be pleased.

Ezra/Leia

What I'm looking for: humor! I'm willing to bet one or both thought about this, and the potential is amazing! The Galaxy's Worst First Date! The Galaxy's Even Worse Second Date! Terrible dating advice from their friends! Worse dating advice from their colleagues in the Rebellion! Growing concern from Bail and Breha about their daughter's interest in this Jedi kid who was born around the same time she was! They can have sex or not, creator's choice, but fail!sex would be preferred!

The time frame could be anywhere from Rebels S2 through the OT. I will be watching the updating canon but I don't need those events incorporated. Feel free to run with everybody surviving through to RotJ, and the Rogue One cast can be included in that, creator's choice again. Terrible dating advice from Cassian and K2 could be a thing, but please keep the overall emphasis on Leia and Ezra. I would also be happy with throwing Luke in there as a “group birthday party got weird” concept.

Leia/Vader

What I'm looking for: accidental incest!  This pairing is made for an Arranged Marriage AU / Beauty and the Beast fusion. She's the daughter and heir to an influential Core World, and he's the Emperor's right hand. Maybe Palpatine wants to bring Alderaan under better control, maybe he intends to give a warning to the other systems without firing the Death Star, or maybe Leia gets caught aiding the Rebellion earlier than ANH and instead of sentencing her to death, her alternate punishment is to be given to Vader. Other setups are fine, though I'd prefer her parents not tell her the truth, because they're forbidden to speak to her, or they think it would destroy her to find out now.

I would be most interested in a situation where Vader was also displeased with the arrangement. Leia's a Rebel and she reminds him of someone he tries not to think about. Maybe she thaws to him over time and he becomes less of a dick due to her influence. Maybe he senses her abilities with the Force and decides to train her, either under the knowledge of the Emperor or in secret. Maybe they wind up consummating the marriage, or maybe he can't for physical or psychological reasons. My only wish is that if they do have sex, Leia isn't actively opposed to the idea by that point. Creator can feel free to go deep into the high grass of dubcon/Stockholm here.

Ahsoka/Hera/Kanan

What I'm looking for: adults acting like adults and not like jealous twelve year olds! Hera and Ahsoka have been communicating for years. Kanan and Ahsoka knew each other as younglings although they weren't close friends. The Order told them not to get attached to others, but the Order is gone now, and they're here. Maybe they wind up in bed as a means to work out lingering survivor's guilt, or maybe they work things into a loving but non-sexual three-sided partnership. Maybe Force Ghosts get a whole new means of intimate interactions with the living. Anything with this ship will make me happy!

Finn/Rey/Kylo and Poe/Finn/Rey/Kylo:

What I'm looking for: fucked up interpersonal conflicts with humor! Finn, Poe, and Rey like each other, and they hate Kylo and they also both kind of want to have sex with him! Kylo hates Poe, Finn and Rey, and also kind of wants to have sex with them! The possibilities are endless: sex pollen, sex magic, fuck or die, stranded together on a desolate planet, stuck in a time loop together, forced allies in an uneasy truce, amnesia leading to misplaced trust and also sex, Kylo defects to the Resistance and a shouting match turns to sex with one and the other joins in after catching them, AU where Ben didn't fall or fell early and came back a little wrong before the film, AU where all three of them were taught by Luke at the probably not canon Jedi school! These are many of my favorite things! Poe can join in, or he can direct, or he can watch, or he can record it for posterity.

Likes: toppy women and partners who are turned on by toppy women, humor, endings with hope intact, functional relationships, dysfunctional relationships, secret relationships that aren’t really a secret, canon divergence AUs such as what if they got there five minutes sooner, porn, fluff, friends with benefits

Specific porn likes: failsex including interrupted during or instead of sex, cunnilingus, both slash and het anal, light bondage, sex pollen, aliens make them do it, the Force makes them do it, mental connections during sex, mental connections as a substitute for sex, using the Force during sex including light Force choking, Force ghost sex

Specific art likes: two or three panel simple line comics, playing card or tarot card type imagery, setting a scene, magic and metaphor

Do not want: noncon (as above, yes for dubcon and sex pollen), scat, watersports, omegaverse, unrequested ships except as mentioned, non-canon AUs such as coffeeshops

Background ships I like besides the ships in my requests: Luke/Leia/Han, Leia/Han, Leia/Luke, Luke/Han, Bail/Breha, past Anakin/Padme, past Anakin/Padme/Obi-wan, past Padme/Obi-wan, past Ahsoka/Anakin, past Ahsoka/Padme, Kanan/Hera, Sabine/Ketsu, Sabine/any female character from any era except Ursa or Hera, Finn/Kylo, Rey/Kylo, Finn/Poe, past Poe/Kylo, Poe/Leia, Baze/Chirrut, post-RotJ Ezra/Luke

A note: If I have requested a ship or scenario elsewhere in a previous exchange, I still love it and would be glad to see it again!

#star wars rare pairs #SW rares 2017 letter

[throneoflevin]

The Waking Nightmare (Chapter 1)

Ketsuchi stood in a room he had come to know all too well. The walls were white. The ceiling was white. The floor was white. There were no windows. He stood in the middle of the room, staring at the grey door that almost seemed to stare back at him from the wall. The only thing in the room that had color. He knew what would happen if were to go through it, he knew what he would see. He knew what he would feel.

Ketsuchi stood motionless in the middle of the room for what felt like years. Was it years? Days? Hours? It was impossible to tell. This room meant he was no longer in control, that darkness had taken him. This singular room was his world now. He was completely alone.

He finally made his way toward the door, ready to throw it open and exit the room. That was all he had to do was walk out. He only had to open that door like he had before and he would return. He grabbed the handle of the door and flung it open. It was simple.

On the other side of the door was another room exactly the same as the one he had just been in. No...it wasn’t the same as the last room, it /was/ the last room. He had thrown open the door only to find himself back where he had began, standing in the middle of the whitewashed room, staring at the grey door.

“No. No!”

He ran forward, pulling open the door again with the same result. He did it again, and again, and again. He lost count of how many times he pulled open the door. His hand had begun to bleed, the skin turned raw from turning the handle time and time again. His feet had begun to blister. His mind was starting to go numb. He knew he just had to get out of this room, then he could return. All he had to do was get through this damn door.

Soon his legs gave out. How long had he been trying this? How long had he been running to the door, knowing the result would be the same? Why couldn’t he get to the other side?

“I have to do this. I have to get out. Get up god damnit!”

He clenched his right hand into a fist, slamming it into his leg.

“Get! Up!”

A quiet voice came through the dark. A voice he recognized, but hadn’t heard for so long. He could never forget it though.

“...Casi?”

He felt the tears begin to roll down his cheeks.

“No. She is dead. She is gone. Don’t let yourself lose you way, W’kira.”

He had to cling to something. He had to remember one thing about himself that he would never be able to forget. W’kira was his name. It was the name Y’ashe called him. She was why he was fighting. All of this...all of the things he had done since the moment she brought him back was for her. He had to win this fight, and he had to win on his own.

Ketsuchi lifted his head, forcing himself to his feet as he readied himself to make another charge at the door. He took a few steps forward before lifting his head.

“Where are you going, Ketsu?”

He froze. The door was gone. He was no longer in that white room but in a room he had long since forgotten. He looked about for the source of the voice, taking in the room he now found himself in. It was a bedroom. The bed sat in the back right corner of the room, a beautiful bed adorned with all sorts of gold trim. The canvas over the bed allowed the curtain pulled around it to mask whoever it was calling out to him from inside. The room had several plush animals around, seemingly placed on every surface that had space for them. It wasn’t until his eyes settled on the stuffed ahriman at the base of the bed that he knew where he was. His mouth slowly fell open.

“W-where...am I? This...this isn’t real. I’m dreaming. This isn’t real.” He repeated the phrase to himself over and over again as he spun around the room, trying to find that grey door. The room had no doors.

“Not possible. Where is it? Where is the damn door?!”

“Ketsu? Is everything ok?” The voice called out again, concern in it’s tone.

He started to run. He ran to every wall of the room, trying to find the grey door. He grabbed the dresser, throwing it aside with all his might, sending all of the stuffed toys on top of it flying off. The mirror shattered on the ground. Ketsuchi turned his head to stare down at it, finally catching a look at his own reflection. He slowly bent over, grabbing a large piece of glass and raising it in front of his face. He stared back at the reflection, unable to grasp just what he was seeing. His eyes were no longer purple. His right was red, his left blue. Like they had been before. He raised a hand to his right eye. There was no longer a scar there.

“Ketsu? What is going on?”

He turned just in time to see the curtain pulled back from around the bed as the midlander woman with her beautiful blonde hair and crimson eyes stepped out. She wore a light pink nightgown, and her hair was disheveled. She had clearly been sleeping based on the rings under her eyes that showed she woke in response to his outburst. She was as beautiful as he remembered her being.

“Ketsu?” She walked toward him, raising a hand to his right cheek. “What is wrong darling?”

“Casi..?” He said the name as if he wasn’t sure who she was.

“Yes, darling. Why are you getting in so late? Was the patrol difficult?”

Patrol? Was that what he had been doing?

“No. I wasn’t on patrol...I...I need to find the door.”

“Door? What is going on Ketsu?”

His eyes darted around the room, unable to find the door once more. It had to be here. It had to be hidden behind something. There was no way a room could have no doors. He turned away from Casi for a moment before he felt her hands reach out for him, grabbing his cheeks and forcing her head back to her. She pressed her lips to his, his eyes growing wide.

Push her away.

Stop this.

She’s dead.

Push her away!

No matter how many times he tried to convince himself, no matter what it was he thought, he couldn’t bring himself to push her away from him. She looked just how he remembered her, down to the pink, silk night dress that she always wore to bed with him. Casi pulled her lips away, looking up at him with a look of great concern. A look he had wanted to see from Y’ashe when he had left the Nest.

“Ketsu, talk to me. Please.”

“You are dead.” Ketsuchi said flatly. It was more to remind himself of the statement than anything else. She was dead, it was true...but here she stood.

“Is that a threat, mister?” She giggled, giving him a playful thump on his arm.

Why was she laughing? It was true, she was dead. Ketsuchi’s mind raced as he tried to put the pieces together. It had to be a dream. The door, he had to find the door.

“Casi I can’t stay with you right now, I need to find this damn door.”

Had he just spoken to her? Acknowledged that she may really be there? Was he concerned she would be upset by his actions? That couldn’t be it. She was long dead.

Casi stood for a short while before she reached out for his shoulders. The gentle, loving, caring touch to his shoulders made his body freeze, only his eyes moving as he felt them forced to look at her.

“When you stop being silly, come join me in bed. Alright?”

Ketsuchi gulped. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her as she walked away, watching every movement of her body from her hips to the flip of her hair. He hadn’t seen her in so long, and yet he felt all the emotions he had once had for her flowing back to him. His first love, who he had lost. As Casi reached the bed she turned back to look at him for a moment, noticing that he was watching her. Slowly she slid the straps of her gown over her shoulders and let it fall to the ground. She was naked beneath, just as he remembered. She climbed back into the bed, drawing the curtain with a playful smile.

Ketsuchi wanted to speak. He wanted to tell her he knew this was all a dream, but his brain seemed to have other plans. He was unable to speak, though his mouth hung open for a moment as he took in the sight of her naked body. He hadn’t seen it in so long, but he still remembered every inch, every curve, every small mark from the birthmark on her back to the scar on the back of her left ankle. It felt...too real to be a dream.

Without even thinking Ketsuchi had slowly started to make his way to the bed. His feet were moving on their own, carrying him toward the place his heart seemed to desire above all else. He reached the bed, pulling the curtain aside and staring down at the woman who had first taught him the meaning of the word “love”.

“At least take off your armor before you come to bed with me,” she said with a quiet giggle, her eyes wandering over the set of white armor he wore.

Ketsuchi looked down at his torso. When did he put on armor? It was in fact the first set he had ever bought with his own gil. She had helped him pick it out to replace the mismatched set of armor he had gotten from the coliseum. It was the result of the first date they had gone on with one another. The white armor was lighter then the plate he was used to wearing, but it wasn’t the color of the armor that caught his eye nor the lighter weight. It was the symbol on his arm. It was a Raven.

“The door.”

Ketsuchi started to look around the room again. That’s right, he was looking for that grey door. He had somehow forgotten what his purpose had been before he saw Casi, but now his mind was focused again. There was still no door. He began to move all of the furniture in the room, chairs, tables, he even turned over the bed in case the door was underneath it. There was nothing.

“What are you doing, Ketsuchi?”

“Casi, you are dead. I need to get out of this room, where is--” He turned to look at her but it wasn’t Casi who stood there any longer. “...Y’ashe?”

It was impossible. He knew it was impossible, but it had to be Y’ashe. Her pink hair, long and draped over his right shoulder, the tribal markings on her face. It was her, before the Nest. Before he had lost her. She slowly approached him as if she was concerned she would scare him if she got too close too quickly. Ketsuchi’s breath caught in his throat. He felt like he was suffocating.

“It can’t be you. You are--”

“Dead, Ketsuchi? You haven’t killed me yet.” She laughed. Her perfect, adorable, amazing laugh. How long had it been since he had last heard her laugh with that much sincerity?

She continued to walk toward him until she stood just in front of him. She reached out and grabbed his wrists, placing them on either side of her waist. She looked up at him with her blue eyes. Those blue eyes that for so long had always told him everything he needed to know about what she was feeling. Those blue eyes that had made him feel special. The blue eyes that had made him feel loved.

“The others won’t be back to the Lodge until later. We have the place to ourselves for a while.” The implication was obvious, but Ketsuchi was still trying to process what he was seeing. What was happening. He looked around the room, but it was no longer the place he had been. He stood in her room at the Wandering Tonberry, the company filled with hunters that they had been in before. Her room was exactly the same, down to the last detail. Once more, it felt real. It was her hands resting on his waist that finally snapped him back to the moment as he stared down at her, unable to make a sound.

“Ketsuchi? Are you alright? Did you not hear what I said,” she giggled, lifting herself on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear, “we are alone.”

His brain fought to understand what was going on. She had said she didn’t love him. Why were they back in the Lodge? Why was she being so intimate? Where were the others? The questions kept coming, one replacing the next before any answer could be found. It only stopped when his brain finally hit one last question:

What was I doing here?

As if to spur him into action, her teeth found their way to the right side of his neck. He growled in response, a reflex, an indication of his instincts kicking in. His hands tightened on her waist. His body grew tense. All of this was enough of a reaction for her as she moved her head away from his neck to stare up at him. Their eyes met and he could see the lust in her eyes. How long had it been since they laid together? How long had it been since she told him she wanted him? How long…

He was done asking questions. In a swift motion he lifted her off her feet and placed her over his shoulder. He carried her to the bed with her giggling all the while.

“Oh, now you are interested? All it took was one--”

She was cut off as he threw her back against the bed. He quickly moved over top of her, grabbing her wrists and pulling them up over her head. Her skin was soft, pale. He could smell lavender, the perfume she always chose above anything else. He was so close to her for the first time in ages. The sight of her eyes scanning his and the way her mouth hung just slightly open the way it always did when she wanted him to kiss her. It was too much.

He pressed his lips to hers, a loud growl rumbling out of his throat as his grip on her wrists tightened. She struggled against him as she always did. The intensity of the kiss pushed his sense over the edge, his brain no longer trying to grasp at anything but the woman who laid under him. The woman he loved. The woman he needed. He moved her fragile wrists together, grabbing them both with one hand as the other hand moved to slide down her side. She squirmed under him, knowing what he was going to do. She refused to let her lips leave his, even as quiet moans and begs left her mouth. She knew he was going to do the one thing only he knew to do.

His hand made its way to her waist, running along the waist of her pants before it slowly slid around to her back. He could feel the soft fur that made up her tail as his hand brushed against it. She squirmed again, trying to free her hands as she finally forced her lips away from his. He wouldn’t let her scream out her objection. He sunk his teeth into her neck, hard enough to draw blood. Whatever she had intended to say was drowned out by a long moan of pleasure. His hand turned over behind her as he finally grabbed hold of the base of her tail. Her body arched against his, though he merely pushed her back down against the bed with his. She was his. He would do as he pleased with her.

“K-Ketsuchi…!” She forced his name out through moan after moan as his teeth released from her neck, his tongue dragging along the skin to soothe over the wound he had made. It would bruise. It would take time to heal. Everyone would know she was his. As was typical for her she would try to prove her own dominance, sinking her teeth into his neck as he had done to hers. Her fangs pierced his skin, causing him to snarl in pain that was quickly washed away by pleasure. He let her linger for a moment before he pulled on her tail again, forcing her to withdraw her teeth as if he had commanded it of her.

She stared up at him, her breathing heavy, her eyes fogged over. He knew he was looking back at her with that same look: longing, desire, need. He had forgotten what that looked like. He had forgotten how her eyes almost glowed when they were laying together. His grip tightened on her wrists, knowing his mind had faltered for a moment and had she thought to escape his grasp, she would have. She wouldn’t though, she didn’t want to.

“Mate with me. Please, Ketsuchi.”

One of her legs moved slowly between his legs as if she were checking to see that her submissive behavior had drawn him in. It had. It always had. The strong woman she was outside the bedroom always melted away in here. She would rebel against him, but she knew her limitations. She knew her desires even more. Her instincts wanted him to be on top of her, wanted him to be in control, and his instincts told him to do so. He released her wrists much to her shock. However she lay there, unmoving as he let his hand leave her tail. He gestured with his head to her clothing, pulling his shirt over his head as he did so. He tossed it aside, not caring where it landed. Her hands finally moved, running over the muscles on his bare chest, her hands tracing a few scars here and there. Ketsuchi quickly lowered his head to sink his teeth into her neck again, a loud snarl meeting her skin.

He didn’t need to direct her anymore then that. Her breath caught in her throat as she struggled for a moment to breath. He could feel her shifting under him as she removed her pants, her legs flailing to kick them off of her ankles. Ketsuchi released her neck, grabbing the collar of her shirt with both hands and pulling in opposite directions. The thin fabric tore in two straight down the center. Her eyes met his giving him not a look of disapproval at destroying her clothing, but a look that only begged him to hurry. His hands moved to his belt, fumbling with it until her hands reached out to touch his. She steadied his hands, knowing his instincts were making him rush. Soon his pants were off, drawers tossed away alongside them. He moved so she could finally kick her pants free from her ankles.

Time froze as he stared down at her. This was what he wanted. He wanted things to be like they were. He wanted the world to make sense again. He wanted to be by her side. He wanted her to love him like he loved her.

Ketsuchi stared down at her as he finally spoke. “...I love you, Y’ashe.”

He could feel it. He could feel the burning in his heart. He remembered what it felt like to be in love.

“I love you too, W’kira.”

W’kira. She called him W’kira again.

“Stay with me here, forever. Don’t ever leave me. Stay in this bed with me, W’kira.”

This wasn’t right. Even as he stared down at her naked body, the body he always knew to be perfect...something wasn’t right. A voice in his head, screaming out. It was so quiet, it sounded so far away, but it was there. What was it saying?

His thoughts stopped as he felt her hand move between his legs, encouraging him to come closer. Encouraging him to mate with her. He wanted to, but suddenly he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. He knew something was wrong.

“Your hair...it was blue.”

Y’ashe froze, the look in her eyes changing from lust to pain. He was right. She had kept her hair blue while they were at the Lodge. He closed his eyes, letting out a quiet sigh before he opened them again.

The room was gone. She was gone. He stood alone in that white room all over again. He turned his eyes to the grey door that mocked him from the other side of the room. His eyes hurt. His head hurt. His heart hurt. Somewhere deep down though, he felt...happy. Real happiness. He walked toward the door, yanking it open again only to once more return to the middle of the room. He did this time and time again, a smile growing ever wider on his face.

“I’m going to win.”

Another time he pulled the door open, only to be placed back in the room.

“I’m going to beat you.”

Another time.

“I am going to get back to her. I’m going to go back to her whole.”

Another time.

“I’m going to call her Ashe from now on. She will love it if I call her something no one else does.”

Back to the middle of the room.

“I’m not giving up.”

He flung the door open again, but this time he wasn’t back in the exact same room. There was no longer a door. He stared at the place where the door had been, where his only hope of escape had been. Suddenly all of his hope melted away. He walked toward the wall, his fingers scratching at it as he tried to find the door that was no longer there.

“No.”

His fingers raked along the wall. Tears slowly started to form in his eyes as he realized what had happened. The cage had been finished.

“No! Ashe!”

He slammed his fists against the wall, screaming out in rage.

“Ashe! Ashe! Call out to me so I can find the door! Ashe!”

His hands began to bleed.

“Ashe! Please! I can feel again! I love you! I want to be happy with you!”

His fingers started to break.

“Ashe!”

There was no response. His words were met only with silence.

[desertedher]

abjure:  /abˈjo͝or,əbˈjo͝or/  ( v. formal )  solemnly renounce (a belief, a cause, or claim)

renounce: /rəˈnouns/  ( v. ) refuse to recognize or abide by any longer

reject: /rəˈjekt/ ( v. ) 3rd def. fail to show due affection or concern for (someone); rebuff.

synonyms for reject include: shun, discard, abandon, forsake, desert.

these are the words which mark her; these are hideous, black stains that cannot be erased from her record much as how blood never washes off from one’s hands. but the difference is with the latter, at this point in time, a sense of indifference has overcome her by now  --  the methods are mundane routines exercised based on a need to survive.

survive: /sərˈvīv/ ( v. ) continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship

some nights she reminds herself that she had no choice. if needbe, the blame is thereby processed onto sabine  --  but she tries to refrain from thinking, let alone saying aloud, her name. to speak a name creates an image, it draws a memory stomped into the dust. all things buried can resurface, whether by years of weathering away and rising with the rain or by shaking hands that impulsively claw at the ground til’ fingernails crack and bleed against all odds, to revive what once was hers. sabine. there is a face in memory and a mouth on her mind; but that face is crinkled, eyes clouded and brimmed by tears, and her mouth -- when not curled into a scowl rightfully turning her away -- is unable to hold back unruly sobs. 

you did this. a motto, spoken in repeat over and over ‘til the pain wears off and instead it sounds monotonous. she has yet to achieve this goal. instead, she finds herself speaking it so many times until basic no longer sounds coherent and her tongue is twisted ( the influence of alcohol on the fitting occasion may be partly responsible ) and finds herself wondering what the use is. you did this to us. she is an artist so here is the blank canvas, here is the soft clay in her hands to mold as she pleases. here is the task ; paint sabine into something she is not. the character of a story, the aspect of life which ketsu has control over. craft her into a selfish character who, because of morals or weakness or what have not, she was holding back. sabine is the reason she would not have been able to reach her dreams. their dreams. ours. you ruined us.

you left.

how could sabine have been the one to leave when she was on her knees. she is a true mandalorian and she will die on her feet before she ever crawls on her knees. how could sabine have run in the face of danger. how could sabine have turned her back at any point in the event when her eyes were on her the whole time, when her eyes never left even as ketsu’s had turned away  --  the severing of a rope, the end of a dynasty. it was childish. it had been a game. she had held her back. but had it been all that bad? ketsu cannot think of a single thing that had been missing in their lives, the sole striking difference between the so-called adventures with sabine and the present. 

uncertainty was nothing new. together, they became fixated on surviving day by day. stressful as it might have been, it taught them a few things. it taught ketsu things she could have never learned even as one of the former top students of the academy  --  second only to sabine. appreciation had been a foreign concept beforehand. now they knew it in the form of solace, of a secure shelter with functional heating, and a meal or two to get them through the days. entertainment was cherished amidst laughter from insight jokes and harboring on melancholic memories, nightmares were tolerated, a respected space of privacy given to the other when needed to be left alone. that never lasted long. warmth shared between them as they slept, clinging onto one another’s forms like anchors drifting in place; unsettled, but grounded. while not wealthy, there was enough. there were bad times, sure. but were they really all that bad? the good had outweighed it for the most part, the good would redeem it. the good would always come.

regret /rəˈɡret/ ( n. ) a feeling of sadness, repentance, or disappointment over something that has happened or been done.

you ruined us.

( and by that point in time, ketsu is no longer thinking of sabine as she repeats this motto. )

#tim e 1!! to f cukin die!!! kiddies!!! #❛┊✰ I WISH I WAS IN LOVE BUT I DON’T WANT TO CAUSE ANY PAIN. ( ᵐᵉᵗᵃ⋅ ) #❛┊✰ CHIN UP KIDDO; WHEN HAVE I EVER LET YA DOWN? ( ᵗʰᵉ ᵒᶫᵈ ᵈᵃʸˢ⋅ ) #█ █ ╰ ⁚⁛ ⁕ ⁛⁚ VERSE 002: THE WAY IT WAS.

[redrikki]

Pride Month Masterpost

Unsurprisingly, I’ve written a few stories focusing on queer characters and romances.

Agent Carter

Because Girls Love Girls (The Soulmate City Remix) - There’s something in the water and the next thing Angie knows, she’s waking up with the name Margaret Carter wrapped around her wrist. (Angie Martinelli/Peggy Carter)

One Last Kiss (The Final Storm Remix) - You never forget your first kiss with your nemesis. Dottie won't forget her last either. At Howard Stark's funeral, she puts a few things in the ground. (Peggy Carter/Dottie Underwood)

Avatar: Legend of Korra

Girl, Gotten (The Heroine After Remix) - As long as Asami’s the hero, Korra’s okay being the love interest. (Korra/Asami Sato)

Leaves on the Wind - Korra, Asami, and the next Avatar (past Korra/Asami Sato)

Ten-Thousand Words (Which Once See the Light of Day) - There are things they can't say.  There are things they wont say. There are actions which speak louder than words.  A series of short stories about the ladies of Legend of Korra. (Asami Sato/Mako, various het pairings)

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Playing with Fire (The Dubiously Consensual Remix) - People didn't tell Azula no. (Azula/Ty Lee)

Battlestar Galactica

Persephone on New Caprica - It’s winter on New Caprica and they’re all Persephone here.  A collection of short stories. (Felix Gaeta/Eight, various het pairings) Trigger warning: non-con/dub con

Black Lightning (TV)

Comic Book Life - Comic book Thunder’s boyfriend knew what his woman did, so why couldn’t Anissa tell her girlfriend? (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Truth Will Out - Anissa’s in the closet about her superhero life. Three times she thought about telling Grace and one time she actually did. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Short and to the Mr. Pointy - Collection of drabbles set across all 7 seasons. (Willow Rosenberg/Tara McClay, Willow Rosenberg/Kennedy, Willow Rosenberg/Oz, Larry/Xander Harris, various het pairings)

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (TV)

The Beast You Made of Me - The Waverider’s resident shapeshifters compare notes. (Mona Wu, Genderfluid Charile)

Neither Should You (The Real People Remix) - Rescuing her clones was the right thing to do. They deserved the right to live their lives and make their own choices. Ava just wished they’d stop sleeping with Gary. (Ava Sharpe/Sara Lance, Ava Clones/Gary Green, implied Gary Green/John Constantine)

Downton Abbey

The Hedgehog’s Dilemma - Thomas Barrow’s daemon is a hedgehog. “Mind my spikes.” Five warnings, four relationships and one revelation. (Thomas Barrow/Duke of Crowborrough, Thomas Barrow/Edward Courtney, Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)

Snakes and Lions - Hogwarts AU. In Thomas, Jimmy finds that courage isn’t exclusive to Gryffindors.  Now if only he could find some himself. (Thomas Barrow/Jimmy Kent)

Miraculous Ladybug

Better Than Ice Cream - Orange, mint, and raspberry could be a tasty combination. The solution to every love triangle should be polyamory, but sometimes it's just not that simple. Spoilers for Love-Eater. (Marinette Dupain-Cheng/Adrien Agreste/Kagami Tsurugi)

Orphan Black

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl - There’s something magical about Uncle Felix’s flat.  Maybe it’s all the art. (Kira Manning, Felix Dawkins, Cosima Niehaus)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

She-Ra (Modesty) Shorts - Three very short Catra/Adora stories. (Catra/Adora)

Spider-man (Ultimates verse)

Fingertips That Might Ignite - Peter is straight like a straight thing.  Jessica isn’t sure what she is. (Jessica Drew/Johnny Storm, Jessica Drew/OFC)

Gonna Share My Tin Man Heart - Kitty moves in and Kitty moves out. Jessica falls in love somewhere along the way. (Jessica Drew/Kitty Pride)

Star Wars

For Amidala - Her handmaidens had all poured so much of themselves into Amidala, it was like they were part of her now. Padmé didn’t know if she had the strength to let one go. (Padmé/Her Handmaidens)

Dateline Felucia - Embedded with the troops on Felucia, a reporter from HoloNet News paints an intimate portrait of the men of the 212th Attack Battalion. (Obi-Wan/Cody, Waxer/Boil)

Tag - Sabine and Ketsu, bounty hunters extraordinaire, argue about how to sign their work. (Sabine Wren/Ketsu Onyo)

When I Was Your Age - Kanan, Ezra, and the fruits of a misspent youth. (Pansexual Kanan Jarrus)

Stranger Things

Date Night - Everyone and her mother seems to think they're together and Robin's getting pretty sick of it. (Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington)

Umbrella Academy (TV)

Iconic - When Vanya learns Klaus is gay from a magazine, she’s angry for more than just one reason. (Vanya & Klaus Hargreeves)

White Collar

Eyes on the Target (The Solid Ground Remix) - Peter asked Diana to keep an eye on Neal for him while he’s stuck in jail. It could be going better. (Diana Barrigan, Neal Caffrey)

Wonder Woman (2017)

After the Glory Fades (The Last Lesson Learned Remix) - Glory fades, but what truly matters remains. Diana takes a moment to remember everything her aunt taught her. (Bisexual Diana, past Antiope/Menalippe )

#my fic #fic masterpost #lgbtq masterpost #pride month #Wonder Woman #white collar #The Umbrella Academy #stranger things #star wars #star wars: rebels #ultimate spider-man #she-ra and the princesses of power #orphan black #miraculous ladybug #downton abbey #dc's legends of tomorrow #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #Black Lightning #battlestar galactica #avatar: the last airbender #avatar: the legend of korra #agent carter

[eyeloch]

Childhood

,looking at the new sketches by @meldy-arts regarding Tristan and Sabine, I felt like quickly writing this, since why not?

Sabine is passion as a child.  In every hour she doesn’t like, her jaw takes a defiant edge.  In each second of joy, her grin could melt the snow that falls on her family home.  In short, she’s an explosive - shattering apart the walls her relatives throw up around their emotions, for a while at least.

The academy changed that.  They lengthened her fuse, taught her to conceal her feelings from those who didn’t care.   But they don’t stop her feeling, and thus the emotions linger within - stoking the fire within.  This fire sought an outlet.

First came creativity - creation of innovation and intriguing solutions.

Next came justice - speaking out against the damage she’d caused.

After she lost everything she chose the need to be feared.  If she could somehow shove the pain onto others, then she’d be better.  Eventually.

And then even Ketsu left her.

#star wars rebels #sabine wren #ketsu onyo #clan wren #smol bean #Eye Write #ficlet

[eyeloch]

R Sabine

R is “a deafening sound” - rather simple for Sabine, to be honest

Sabine Wren is an explosive.  A crude metaphor perhaps, but it’s one she’s been told from childhood.

“lengthen your fuse, verd'ika,” they’d scold her, “or you’ll detonate before you grow up.”

The imperial academy was much the same - they taught the young warriors to strengthen their minds and bodies, to ready themselves to detonate for glory.  Even minor acts of defiance were in the same spirit - smoke bombs and little bits of arson.

Even as she runs, Ketsu by her side, she half-hopes she’ll explode along the way.  A colorful sort of end would be ideal - hopefully with a deafening sound.  But almost any explosion would be better than the endless conformity of the academy.

But she doesn’t explode.

In fact she lives.  She escapes. 

Ketsu leaves her for dead, and again she half hopes she’ll go out in a blast of colour.

But she lives.

In fact, as her life continues on, she begins to wonder if she isn’t an explosive.  That perhaps the fact she’s alive, painting, dreaming and fighting is glory enough.  That the most deafening sound in the galaxy isn’t the blast of a bomb, but the beat of your heart.

#sabine wren #ketsu onyo #eye write #I'm tired #so this might be wierd #:( #prompt fill #feel free to request more