Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Well I'd hope that since we're here anyway

We could end up saying

Things we've always needed to say

So we could end up staying

Now the story's played out like this

Just like a paperback novel

Let's rewrite an ending that fits

Instead of a Hollywood horror

-"Someday" by Nickelback

He bolted the moment he had the chance.

It didn't really take much. Just the hint of a Force Suggestion, a little tiny nudge towards the minds of his handlers to take their eyes off him for just a few moments—Thrawn really should have invested in some suppressors before he'd come back to Lothal to capture him—and Ezra was off, dashing down the halls with heart pounding so loud he could hear it audibly in his ears.

He was three levels down before the alarms finally stuttered out, broken speakers squealing with the alert, notifying the Chimaera's ragged crew of his escape. All eyes and attentions immediately looked for him but by then he was in the vents, squeezing through the too-narrow metal corridors with a kind of desperate adrenaline high that was dizzying.

He pulled himself heavily through the claustrophobic space, panting, his mind idly thinking of how Sabine would be so disappointed at how rusty he'd gotten at this.

Somehow, he made it to the primary hanger.

There were plenty of Stormtroopers on guard—of course there were, this was the most obvious place for him to go—and they turned almost as one towards him as soon as he opened the door. But after holding the oxygen inside a broken bridge for upwards of twenty-nine hours, Force Push-ing the lot away was a small endeavor.

All he had to do was gather it to himself and release.

Bodies flew, troopers were stunned by the force.

Ezra glanced quickly around the hanger, taking stock of what remained undamaged. There were a couple gunships, some TIEs... nothing with a hyperdrive except—

There!

He was inside the Lambda shuttle moments later. His hands flew across the dashboard, booting up the engines, powering the shields. He glanced out the viewport. As luck would have it, the purrgil had sheered off the whole side of the ship on this level, so he had a nicely large gaping hole to direct the craft through.

His hands found the steering yoke and he gunned it.

Ezra gained altitude, higher and higher, the shuttle screaming against the speed it was being made to go, until the clouds turned transparent and he was in clear space, the black void and twinkling stars filling his viewport.

Ezra slumped back in his seat, exhaling. His arms dangled by his sides. He was still tingling with energy from the escape. It had been an impulse plan, barely thought out... but it had worked.

He was away from Thrawn.

Away from the Chimaera.

Ezra stirred, rousing himself. He regripped the pilot's yoke, reorganized his thoughts. He should be able to get his bearings now. Find out where he was. Figure out how to get home.

He directed the shuttle further away from the planet with that plan firmly in mind.

-SW-

The navicomputer on the shuttle was completely, frustratingly unhelpful, unfamiilar star charts populating as it ran analyses on the surrounding systems, and Ezra had to put that task on hold for a moment as several TIE fighters were sent up from the planet to pursue him.

The shuttle was slow and not very maneuverable, so it was a harried chase. He took more than one hit, grip tight on the yoke, his precognitive Force Sense all that kept the glancing strikes from turning his craft into a fireball.

After a heart-pounding ten minutes, in which he strained the shuttle to it's absolute limits, he somehow managed to lose them in the bone field rings.

Now Ezra sat tensed on the edge of his seat, watching the petrified bones float around him, hidden inside one of the larger skeletons. He couldn't hear the screech of the TIEs. Couldn't hear anything except the pulse in his ears. The silence and the purrgil remains gave him creeping feelings of unease, and he strained out for any sense that the TIEs were returning.

They swept in tight search patterns, looking for him.

A long cat-and-mouse game ensued.

Ezra kept on the move, hopping from hiding place to hiding place with short controlled bursts from the thrusters. Hera would have been proud of how he handled the shuttle, keeping it at as low a level of power as he could while still avoiding the TIE patrol. His nerves racked every time one of the Imperial ships came too close, and he held his breath as if the simple act of respiration would give himself away.

Finally, after a long two hours, the TIEs gave up and returned to the planet.

He watched their blips on the sensors until they went out of range.

Ezra stayed wound-tight still for several moments, unable to relax until he was certain they weren't coming back.

A tingling foreboding in the Force told him it wouldn't be long before they did. But for the moment, he let his shoulders loosen, let his hands fall off the shuttle's dashboard.

Slowly, his breathing stabilized, and a slow-moving, uneasy calm seeped into him.

Now what? he asked himself.

He had been so caught up in actually enacting his escape that he hadn't stopped to consider after.

Ezra let himself drift, let the shuttle float towards the edge of the bone field, at a loss as to what to do next.

The silence was oppressive, the ambient sound of the shuttle's life support a thrumming, ticking clock, tolling inside his head. The shuttle hung in space, unmoving, going neither forward nor back as its pilot struggled to think.

All was quiet.

Ezra felt paralyzed. Dismayed. The rising realization of just how ill-thought out his idea had been was moving through him like heavy sloshing liquid.

Where could he go?

He had no idea where the purrgil had taken them. He could have been taken to the far reaches of the galaxy. Without coordinates, his navicomputer couldn't plot a course home.

Ezra considered the dilemma for a few moments, then shook himself and scooted forward on the seat. He checked the logs to see if the shuttle still had a record of the places it had already been.

A spark of hope lit in him when he found the astral coordinates for Lothal. He set the navicomputer to calculate a path, waiting with anticipation for the results.

...

...

...Was it taking longer than usual?

Ezra sat for what felt like a very long time, growing anxious, eyes making furtive glances out the viewport even though the sensors would alert him of any approaching ships. He fidgeted in his seat. His heel tapped the floor, knee bouncing.

He fought the urge to get up and pace, impatient.

Finally the navicomputer beeped, but the sound was wrong, harsh like it was some kind of error.

Ezra leaned over the dashboard, squinted to make out the words in the display screen.

UNKNOWN VECTOR, NO PATH FOUND.

"What?" he exclaimed. He'd never seen that kind of message before. A sick sinking hitting his stomach he fiddled and futzed with the navicomputer, trying to clear the error. A second or two of mashing buttons got a new and even worse status:

HYPERSPACE CALCULATIONS UNAVAILABLE.

"No no, come on!" he begged, starting over, inputting the numbers again.

The navicomputer clicked and calculated... and after an unbearable wait returned the same message.

Ezra stared at the display, heat pricking at his eyes. Why wasn't it working?

He tried again, agitation in every movement.

He screamed in anger and smacked the dashboard hard when he got the same error a third time.

It wasn't fair. He had to get home. He had to get back to Lothal. To Sabine. He had to tell her how he felt. How much he owed her. How the thought of someday seeing her again had kept him going when his hope was running thin, helped him through the most miserable days of his imprisonment.

Ezra slumped back against the seat, fighting back tears. After everything, was this how it was going to end?

As despair threatened to rise up and choke him, a quiet voice inside his head—his "inner Sabine" he called it—whispered a gentle No.

Ezra straightened himself up.

Slowly, with effort, he took in a deliberate inhale, calming himself down.

Eyes closed. Breathe. Just breathe.

The Force is with me. I am one with the Force.

He repeated the mantra, timing it to his breaths.

The Force is with me. I am one with the Force.

Okay. So the navicomputer was no good. He had fuel for maybe three days. If he returned to the planet he might be able to survive, maybe hide the shuttle, maybe steal some more fuel down the line.

But Ezra wasn't quite willing to give up on getting home just yet. Opening his eyes, his hands felt almost guided as they reached for the dashboard, trying a different tactic.

He opened up the comm channel. Tuned to Frequency Zero.

Then he sat on the floor and meditated and prayed for a miracle.

-SW-

His fuel was almost out, life-support systems at bare minimum, but he didn't even feel the chill, so deep into meditation that he was utterly still where he sat, the only sign of life his breath misting in the quiet.

He called out into the Force, reaching. Feeling the energy of the universe pool and flow around him.

Then, suddenly, there was a rolling portent of warmth.

A mind reaching back, responding to him. The shape of the mind belonged to a creature, ancient and noble, bathed in song.

The Force-carried sound became fragments of words in his head, as the creature's soul touched his.

Friend.

Little One.

Starchild.

Ezra opened his eyes, coming out of meditation sharply with a cry of relief. He watched in awe as hyperspace opened up and a huge purrgil, tentacles still glowing ethereal blue, appeared from the starry void.

Two more dropped out behind him, but the largest one was the one who "spoke" to Ezra, mind wrapping around his in a warm, comforting embrace.

Ezra's heart wrenched, burying himself in the feeling. He knew what he must be leaking out—hurtpleasehelp—but the alpha purrgil just crooned through the Force a reassurance—safefriendhere—and then the tears fell.

"Thank you..." he whispered, reverently.

A bellow echoed through the Force and the purrgil opened its mouth, directing the young Jedi to stretch out in faith and take shelter inside.

Ezra moved almost in a daze, pushing the yoke forward and letting the last dregs of the shuttle's fuel bring him one step closer to home.

-SW-

Sabine's concentration was broken by the ping of the tower's long-range comm system.

Straightening up from where she had been carefully applying slow brushstrokes to the inside wall next to the door, Sabine pushed her bangs out of her eyes and bit her lip.

Hera wasn't due to call for another hour. She always checked in every evening, catching up, making sure Sabine was okay.

Who was this?

Reluctantly, annoyed at being torn away from her work when she'd been in the zone, Sabine set aside her paintbrush and stood, brushing off flakes of paint and dust motes, and stepped over to the transmitter.

Turning the knob to switch it active, she let it connect and then leaned back on her hip, crossing her arms.

"Hello Sabine." It was her mother. "Are you well?"

Her annoyance simmered but cooled down, and Sabine tried to muster up the proper amount of enthusiasm for greeting her mother.

"Mother," she said evenly. "Nice to hear from you. What's the occasion?" Her lips quirked, tugging at the corners. "Did Tristan tangle himself up in detcord again?" she joked.

Her mother seemed... flustered. "It's... it's a bit complicated to explain," her voice wavered, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. Sabine's brows quirked slightly. There was muttering on the other side of the line, hushed whispers. "Well go ahead," she finally heard her mother parse out, gently urging.

A new voice spoke.

"Sabine?"

A cry left her, involuntarily, a sound like pain and hope and joy all mixed up. Her arms uncrossed at once, gripping the sides of the transmitter like an anchor in a violent storm.

"E—" She almost couldn't say it. "Ezra?!" she gasped, in disbelief, in guarded joy.

An exhale over the line, a sound of breath. His breath.

She would know him anywhere.

"Hey Sabine..." he said, his voice audibly trembling. "I missed you."

"Di'kut!" she cursed, curling her fingers into the edge of the transmitter so hard her knuckles turned white. "Where have you been?! Where are you?! How...?"

She couldn't finish the last part. How did you make it back to me? was what she wanted to ask, her heart knocking against her ribcage with emotion.

"Guess I owe you an explanation," he said, with a slight chuckle.

Stars but it was so good to hear his voice again. Her eyes were already brimming, threatening to spill over.

She laughed, but she had to laugh or else she'd cry and he couldn't hear her break down like that, not when there was so much she had to tell him.

How beautiful Lothal was becoming, freed from the Empire. How much she'd missed him. How much his absence hurt her daily, made her sick with grief.

What she'd realized she felt for him.

"I'm on Mandalore right now," Ezra told her. A million questions about how he'd found his way there crowded at the front of her mind but they fell away as he followed up with an adorable, "You feeling up to a family reunion?"

"I'll be on the next ship out," she promised, her voice clogged. "See you soon."

She wasted no time, ending the call, darting around the room and shoving things haphazardly into her bag, setting out an overflowing bowl of food for Murley just in case the loth-cat came around again while she was out.

She put feet to the pedals of her speeder and beelined for the city, comming Hera on the way, telling her the good news.

He was alive and he was safe and she would see him soon.

-SW-

When the ship touched down she ran to the orange-clad figure on the platform, standing apart from the rest of her family and the Nite Owls that had come to greet her.

Her bag dropped along the way; she hurled arms open.

He closed the distance the last three steps and caught her, lunging, scooping her up, taking her feet right off the ground. Her head threw back and she cackled with joy, he was crying, she was crying, they held each other so tight they could burst, their laughter swallowed up by the sound of the Ghost's engines circling overhead, as Hera tried to find a clear space to land.

The glimmering edges of sunset gave the platform a warm, heavenly glow as their emotions spilled out, their reunion on display before her entire clan and several others.

She thought she might have heard a few Mandalorians thumping their armor in respect for them. Her mother and father were beaming, their own hands clasped together. Tristan was smiling.

Ezra set her back down on her feet, finally, cradling her face like she was the most precious jewel. His eyes were glowing with warmth and love and Sabine pressed her forehead into his and looked into them happily.

"I have so much to tell you," she said, breathless.

"Me too," he whispered. "I promise, I'll tell you everything."

And she knew it was a promise he'd keep.

She let her hand drift down to grasp his, tightly, firmly, turning with him as Hera barreled down the Ghost's ramp—Chopper's indignant blorting and a tiny worried, "Mom!" calling back after her—feeling lighter than air, like bubbles were bursting in her chest.

Ezra was home.