Chapter Text
1
It was one of the first lessons Ahsoka had taught Sabine in lightsaber combat.
“Parry, strike,” Ahsoka had said one day aboard the ship, her sabers drawn and quartered as Sabine stood with her own blade. “When fighting with a saber, you must maintain a balance. A balance between defense and offense.”
She spun one of her blades around her hand in a wide arc. Show off, Sabine wanted to say.
A small smile played on Ahsoka’s face. “Too much defense, and your opponent will overpower you,” she said. “Too many offensive strikes, and you will tire quickly, letting yourself be vulnerable to a well-timed attack.”
Sabine nodded and adjusted her grip on her hilt. It was quiet, save for Ahsoka’s patient voice and the hum of their sabers.
“And so,” she continued, “there is a need for balance. Parry, then strike is a perfect harmony. A block and a hit. An essential lesson for any student to learn.”
Ahsoka repositioned her footing and steadied her guard, sabers in hand, expression steeled.
“Let’s begin.”
——
Parry, strike.
The words echoed over and over in Sabine’s head, etching itself into her mind. Her lips silently mumbled the syllables as she blocked another slam of the woman’s red saber, stumbling back.
She panted, taking a moment to wipe her damp hair out from her eyes.
The white-haired woman paced around her menacingly, the corners of her lips tugged up into a smirk. She was a good fighter, quick on her feet and unrelenting in her attacks. Something odd hummed about her, and it wasn’t just her crimson lightsaber. The Force wove in and out of her strikes and swings, a level of it that even Sabine could notice.
Sabine considered herself a skilled swordsman, but this woman’s fighting style was erratic, unpredictable.
Her muscles burned more with each strike and dash. Sabine gave a quick gasp after narrowly avoiding a dash of the red blade, a mere sidestep away from yet another gruesome scar. Her stomach wound wasn’t something she forgot very easily. Especially when currently dueling the person who gave her it.
The woman huffed, pulling her saber away. She continued to circle around Sabine like a vulture, while she tried to regain her footing.
“What are you?” Sabine asked, catching her breath, her voice barely above a whisper.
The woman’s lips edged up into an even wider smile as she readjusted her grip on her saber. “What sort of fucking question is that? What am I?” She spun her saber before snapping her gaze back to Sabine. “You tell me,” she snarled, slamming her blade against hers.
Sabine barely threw her lightsaber up in time, blocking the red blade only by chance.
Parry, strike was miles from her mind as their blades met at a cross, the edges of red and green light sparking and hissing in protest.
Sabine’s chest rose and fell in a frantic rhythm, watching the glow of the blade bathe the woman in a sickly red light.
“A Mandalorian with a lightsaber,” the woman considered, eyeing Sabine’s armor. “Now that’s a first. For me, at least.”
The woman slid her blade up as Sabine slammed her saber back into the red, meanwhile trying desperately to think of a way out of this fight. “Lucky you.”
“Haven’t fought many Mandies before. Certainly not a Jedi one.”
“First time for everything, right?”
One glance at the woman’s crazed look and she knew winning was out of the question. Running away was not the most Mandalorian option, but even Sabine knew when to step back.
But when?
Sabine blocked another low strike of the red saber. Then another.
A distraction. Sabine just needed to distract her, and then she could sneak a kick and slip away while she was down.
The woman slammed a flurry of strikes against Sabine, nothing but a blur of red.
Sabine twisted her saber up in time to catch one, locking eyes, taking in the fury on the woman’s face.
Now or never.
“You’re pretty when you’re mad,” Sabine said sweetly.
Distraction successful. The woman’s eyes blew wide open in confusion, and she momentarily loosened her grip on her saber. It was just enough.
In a heartbeat, Sabine landed a swift kick to the woman’s lower leg. She didn’t even stop to see if the blow did anything— Deactivating her blade with a hiss, she booked it down the alley and ran until she was sure the woman was gone.
The fluttering feeling in Sabine’s stomach was probably a lingering effect from the fight, surely.
2
The next time they met, it was under much less violent circumstances.
Sabine took a seat at the dimly lit cantina bar, light band music echoing throughout the old building.
She and Ahsoka were tracking down separate tails of a lead. Sabine’s job was about tracking an old reporting officer of Thrawn’s. Apparently, a common drinker at this cantina.
Sabine threw a glance around at the patrons, but everyone was either too drunk or unconscious for her to get a good eye on.
She sighed and resigned herself to the fact that she was going to be here for a while.
Resting her chin in her hand and running a hand along the bar, she went over Ahsoka’s last training session.
Keep your eyes on your opponent, she had said. Every step, every movement is a clue to their next attack. Every glance and reposition is a clue. Watch for it.
“Mandie?”
At the voice, Sabine's head snapped up, her hand flying to the hilt at her waist.
Her eyes fell on the white-haired woman, leaning on the bar. Still dressed in her cloak and hood, a pleased look playing on her face.
Sabine furrowed her brows, returning her hands to her side after eyeing the cantina. No droids, no sabers…
“Funny seeing you here,” the woman continued, head tilted.
“Uh-huh,” Sabine put in, not completely at ease. “What are you doing here?”
A smile. “Can’t a girl stop by for a drink? I’m… off duty.”
Sabine scoffed at the remark. “I could take you in right now, you know. My master’s waiting just outside.” A lie on Sabine’s part. But a believable one.
The woman groaned and smoothed her hair down, flipping the hood back. “And I thought the off-duty bit was a bit obvious. Look, I mean, do we always have to fight? Can’t we just talk? Jedi to… non-Jedi.” She gave a thin smile.
Sabine threw a daggered glare over to her. But alas, no lightsaber in sight, and no murder droids. Before Sabine could say anything more, the white-haired woman waved down a droid bartender.
“Hey! Yeah- a spotchka for me, and for my friend a—?” She turned and raised her eyebrows expectantly.
Sabine was smarter than that. “Nothing for me,” she said flatly.
The woman tutted but gave a nod to the droid, who obliged and returned with a tall glass of blue liquid.
“So,” she began. “Both chasing after the same old thing. Funny.”
Sabine fiddled with her vambrace. “Hilarious,” she said, going for a bored look.
The woman hummed, glancing around the cantina. She then grabbed a stool, slid it closer to Sabine, and sat down in one swift motion.
“This seat taken?” she asked with an innocent tilt of her head.
Sabine turned to face her, trying not to let the amusement show on her face. “Do you track down all your enemies and sit down with them at cantina bars?”
“Just the ones I like,” she replied, surely joking. “And anyway, I like our little chats.”
“Do you, now? I couldn’t tell, you’re always so quiet.” Silently, Sabine pressed the buzz comm on her vambrace, alerting Huyang, who would hopefully in turn alert Ahsoka to get over here right now, there’s a pretty dark-sider batting her eyelashes at me in a bar and I wasn’t quite trained for this type of situation.
The other woman didn’t seem to notice. She gave a small laugh and brought the glass to her lips. “Good one. They teach you all that snark in Jedi school?”
“Not a Jedi.”
“Hmm?” She looked up from her drink. “Lightsaber and a Jedi master? But– you’re not one?”
“Nope,” she supplied, not bothering to explain any further. “And anyway, I could argue the same for you. But you’d kill me on the spot if I called you a Jedi.”
“See, it’s like you know me already.”
Sabine looked the woman over cautiously, trying to get a grasp on who exactly this person was. She ran a finger around the rim of her spotchka glass absently, smiling brightly up at Sabine.
Sabine did not like her level of sarcasm that rivaled her own, or the way she snuck up on Sabine all the time, or the way she was always smiling, or the way their banter bordered on flirtatious, but really Sabine didn’t really mind that last part–
Hm. She bit her tongue at that.
An embarrassing thought, but it stuck nonetheless. The woman drummed her fingers on the bar and snapped Sabine out of her wandering thoughts.
“Here we are, just a couple of not-Jedi’s, not sharing a drink. What a pair we are.”
“We are not a pair,” Sabine said with a roll of the eyes that she hoped masked her blush. “And we are not a ‘we’.”
At that, the woman raised her eyebrows behind the spotchka glass.
Another glare from Sabine. She opened her mouth to put another word in, when—
For just a moment, the woman straightened and her hands froze around the drink. She glanced back automatically at the cantina doors with a blank look. Recovering just as quickly, she mused, “Ah. You called your Jedi friend.”
Ahsoka was nowhere in sight. Sabine cursed the Force and added this to the list of ways the Force has smugly screwed me over in one way or another.
“I… did. You don’t think I’d sit down with the enemy just for fun.”
“No, s’pose not. And anyway, I’d do the same,” she said through a half-laugh, standing up from the stool. “But this was fun, Mandie.”
“‘Till we meet again,” Sabine said sarcastically, facing her with an elbow propped on the bar.
“Oh, I bet we will,” the woman said casually, flipping her empty glass over. “And it’s Shin,”
Sabine blinked. “Sorry?”
“My name. It’s Shin.”
She bounded over to the cantina exit before Sabine could say a word. Actually, even if she had stayed, Sabine wouldn’t be able to gather her thoughts in time to say anything coherent.
She watched Shin’s robe flutter behind her as the cantina door slammed shut.
“Shin,” Sabine murmured, trying the name out on her tongue.
——
Sabine was two drinks in and quite lost in thoughts she’d rather not detail when Ahsoka showed up at the cantina.
Since Shin and the rest were long gone, Ahsoka and Sabine piled back onto their ship and prepped for lightspeed, while Huyang scolded Sabine for not telling them sooner about her run-in with the dark sider. But he was all bark and no bite, as usual. Ahsoka was mostly just happy that she didn’t get stabbed this time.
Sabine collapsed into the co-pilot’s chair and watched the black and white stars streak into the familiar dizzying blue of hyperspace.
Having a name to the face was odd.
Shin.
She filed the name away in her memory and tried not to think about her anymore.
3
They were not any closer to finding Thrawn.
The good news, though, is that neither were Shin and the others.
And so, Sabine and Ahsoka’s days mostly consisted of half Jedi training, and half chasing after dead-end leads on the most obscure of planets. Whispers here and there, but nothing ever concrete.
Sabine hadn’t run into Shin again in almost three whole weeks. Not that she missed her, or anything.
But she could admit that sometimes it was nice to talk to someone about something other than combat training and meditation. Or lightsabers, in Huyang’s case. Even if that conversation was usually between two drawn lightsabers and with the possibility of it ending in death.
It was real. It was new.
But Sabine didn’t have much time to think of that, especially not today. She leaned against the wall of the ship, watching Ahsoka clip her sabers to her belt as the ship ramp swung down. The forest planet they had landed on once apparently housed several Jedi artifacts and texts, which Ahsoka was looking to collect the remnants of before any Imperials did.
“Not this time,” Ahsoka repeated for the umpteenth time.
“Why not? You’ve seen my training– I mean, you’ve been training me. I’m ready.”
“Not after last time. I don’t know what I’ll run into this time around. Don’t trail after me, now,” she said, glancing up. “And don’t look at me like that– I’ll be quick. Watch after Huyang.”
A scoff from Sabine. “Watch after–?”
But Ahsoka had already made her way down the ramp and into the rubble of the old stone city.
Sabine kicked the wall of the ship, muttering curses she wouldn’t be caught dead saying around Hera.
But she was not about to hang around the ship with nothing to do while Ahsoka did Force-knows-what. Did she know Sabine? So, she convinced Huyang to putter about the cockpit and recalibrate sensors before slipping off of the ship, lightsaber in tow.
She purposefully headed in the opposite direction of Ahsoka’s, eyeing old outlines of stone buildings and foundations of temples as she trudged through the forest.
The planet was objectively prettier than some of the others she’d visited on their entire Where-In-The-Universe-Are-Thrawn-And-Ezra journey. Soft and tall grass brushed against her boots as she took in the blue-green leaves of the trees all around her. Stones and pillars were buried and jutting out of the dirt everywhere, battered and weathered by time and nature.
Careful not to stray too far from the ship, Sabine knelt to better inspect a particular flat stone carving she’d come across. She ran a hand along the intricate pattern, filing away the techniques for her sketchbook, and then became vaguely aware of a light treading of footsteps on dry grass somewhere behind her.
A quiet crunch of leaves, a near-silent brush of fabric against grass.
Sabine thought maybe now was a good idea to sharpen up on the old Force connection skill. She used all three of her midichlorians to try and reach out in her meager connection to the Force, trying to get a grasp on this pursuer. She couldn’t say she was surprised when nothing was felt.
She remained still, her gaze fixed ahead, straining to hear more. The footsteps grew closer, barely audible over the wind of the forest.
A second passed. Then five. Ten, and then every gut instinct yelled out at her.
Sabine spun around, igniting her blade with a sharp hiss. The blade of her lightsaber found itself pointed directly at Shin.
Her cape and hair ruffled slightly in the wind, hands up, and on her face a mixture of amusement and caution. Shin raised an eyebrow, eyeing her stance. “You’ve improved.”
Sabine huffed. “All in hopes of running into you again,” she said.
“That’s sweet.”
“Right. And here we are,” Sabine said. “Again.”
Shin tilted her head with a bright smile, bringing her hands back down to her sides. Sabine just readjusted her grip on the lightsaber, keeping it steady and ready to strike, watching Shin for any sign of an attack. She, meanwhile, stood where she was and made no attempt to draw her own saber.
“Admiring the art?” Shin asked, nodding to the stone behind Sabine.
She kept the blade steady and chanced a glance back to the carving. “Don’t be cute. How did you find us?”
“We tracked your ship,” Shin said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Then: “You think I’m cute?”
Sabine pointedly sidestepped the question. “Stop distracting me. And stop smiling. Stop- Stop everything, actually. I don’t want to fight you right now.”
Shin took a step closer. “Distractions can be nice, sometimes.”
Sabine tried not to think about what that meant.
“Sure, Shin. Now get out of here.”
Shin's whole face lit up. “So you remembered my name. We’ve only met, what, twice before?” She smirked. “Do you think of me often, then?”
A bitter laugh escaped Sabine. “Think of you? That’s a bit much. I only try to stay out of your damn way.”
“You’re lying,” Shin said in a honeyed tone.
“Lying? About what? I hate you, you hate me. It’s the only damned thing we can agree on.”
In a heartbeat, Shin’s lightsaber ignited, then slammed and sparked into Sabine’s at a cross.
Their eyes locked, unflinching and unafraid, the red and green reflected in Shin’s eyes with a quiet humor, like an inside joke known only to them.
It was quiet, save for the hum of the sabers and their quickened breaths.“You like me.”
Sabine’s face flushed, something uncertain flickering inside. “Wishful thinking.”
Before Shin could get another quip out, Sabine gave a swift kick to Shin’s leg and twisted her saber up. Shin stumbled back in shock as her red blade shot back into its hilt and landed in the grass.
Sabine ran and ran until she reached the landing spot, and didn’t stop to catch her breath until she was aboard the ship again.
She’d wait for Ahsoka to get back and tell her about her whole run-in with the dark siders.
Except maybe for that last bit.
4
The Phantom was a smaller ship, but it more than made up for it in speed.
Sabine was at the controls, steering the ship left and right, dodging the red lasers streaking across the star-studded dark of space. Hera and Ahsoka had already jumped to lightspeed in the Ghost, trusting Sabine to pick off the last two TIE fighters that they couldn’t quite shake off.
Nimble things, they were. The new Imperial Remnant pilots were decently trained, but really no match for someone who learned to fly under General Syndulla. Sabine timed a shot perfectly and watched it make a direct hit on the first TIE’s wing, and almost felt bad. She watched the explosion and then realized that actually no, she didn’t.
She wasted no time and swerved to get an angle on the second TIE, who seemed moderately smarter than the first. It dodged out of the way of every single shot Sabine sent out, sending a flurry of its own right back.
Sabine groaned and thumped a hand on the cockpit dash, the coordinates of her lightspeed jump blinking at her from the console screen. Ahsoka and Hera were waiting for her.
Sabine spun the Phantom around the TIE, hand already tightening around the turret trigger and—
Another ship whisked by, dashing across Sabine’s viewport. It wasn’t Imperial, or New Republic. Who—? Sabine jammed a button for her local comm radio and barked, “Starship at 6-3, identify yourself. Who is this?”
The reply was instant. “Hey, Mandie,” came a voice tinged with static.
“Shin? Are you serious?”
She didn’t reply, clearly occupied with chasing the Imperial. A short chase, that was. A muffled boom echoed as the TIE blew up and broke apart in a stunning explosion. A singular laser from Shin’s starfighter had hit it.
“You’re kidding,” Sabine said under her breath.
The comm crackled back on. “Thanks for leaving one for me,” said Shin, a smile audible in her voice.
“No, no— I? How did you—“
Shin’s starfighter weaved over to face the Phantom. Sabine could just barely make out a blurry shock of white hair, and Shin waving her fingers in greeting through the viewport.
“Just saw you in a bit of trouble. And, why not? Do my good deed of the day, no?”
“You didn’t need to,” Sabine said. She would never be caught saying thank you to Shin of all people.
“And yet I did,” Shin retorted. “Can’t let the Jedi have all the good fun.”
An eye roll from Sabine. “I’m not a—“
“Jedi, right. Sorry.” A pause. “Speaking of which, where is your Jedi friend?”
Sabine’s eyes flickered back to her console. “Long gone. Like I should be, actually.”
“Going so soon?”
“Yup,” Sabine said, popping the P.
“Hold on now, we haven’t had a chance to catch up in, what, two days?”
Sabine’s lips twisted into a smile against her will. “Two days since you’ve last tried to kill me. Remember when you stabbed me back when we first met?”
“Ah, right. That whole business on Lothal. It’s healed up fine, I’m assuming?”
“Obviously.”
“I wouldn’t really kill you, of course,” Shin said, a trifle quieter. “I’m embarrassed to say I’ve grown a little fond of you.”
“Gee, thanks. Means a lot.”
“Honest. And, see, I haven’t tried to kill you today.” A pause over the radio. “I could start?”
“No, that’s okay, Shin,” Sabine replied, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Shin tutted. “Actually, I was sort of expecting you to, I don’t know, shoot me down. Tractor-beam me back to the New Republic. Why aren’t you?”
She had a point. A point that left Sabine reeling. Why hadn’t she done any of that? Or even send a message to Ahsoka?
This whole encounter was getting way too… something. Probably best not to start putting a name on it. Sabine sighed and just inputted the lightspeed coordinates as she said, “Because my ship’s too small, and everyone’s too far away.” It was a clumsy lie.
“Right,” Shin said, amused.
“Listen,” Sabine said, shifting in her seat. “You got me out of a tight spot, and in return I’m not going to shoot you down. We go our separate ways and forget this ever happened. Okay?”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Okay,” Sabine said. “Okay. I’m out of here. Jumping to lightspeed.”
“If you insist. I’ll be seeing you, Mandie.”
And at that moment, as Sabine had her hand on the hyperdrive control and her local comm still active and blinking, there came a thrilling feeling.
She could say anything she wanted to right now, and then dash off right into hyperspace with no consequences. It was just the two of them in this void of the galaxy. Sabine glanced up at the starfighter still visible through the glass of her viewport, and pressed a finger to her comm button.
“Hey, Shin?”
No consequences…
“Mmhm?” came Shin’s voice.
Sabine blanked. Oh, stars. Reality hit her like a load of banthashit and she immediately pushed the whole idea from her mind. What in the world was going on with her?
“Er. I hate you,” she said instead.
Leaving no time to reply, Sabine slammed the hyperdrive lever forward and was pushed back into her pilot's seat as the viewport stars melted into hyperspace blue.
Best not to tell Ahsoka about this, either.