Chapter Text
Sabine still wasn’t entirely sure how this…whatever it was…had actually happened.
They’d been on the Ghost, as usual. Well. Rattling around in the Ghost as was usual these days, more like, with Ezra holed up in his bunk doing who knew what, Zeb lurking in the gun turret, Hera slumped in her chair across the crew room from Sabine pretending to read and Chopper grumbling away somewhere out of sight, and Kanan—
But then Rex had poked his head around the door, rubbing a hand awkwardly over his bald pate, and nodded Hera out into the corridor to talk about something. A new mission, Sabine had assumed wearily, until Rex had said something about calling in a favour from our mutual friend and Hera had made a noise somewhere in between a sigh and a sob and flung her arms briefly around his neck.
“Oh, Rex, thank you.” Another noise, this one sounding suspiciously like a sniff. “And you pass that on to her when you see her, you hear me?” And then suddenly the Ghost was full of a Hera-shaped hurricane, rousting Sabine and Ezra and Zeb out of their funks and flinging hastily-filled bags onto their shoulders and harrying them down to the hold where Rex was waiting for them.
Ezra baulked at the door to the hold, scowling. “Are you serious? A holiday? Now?”
Hera looked briefly strained, but Rex in his Captain mode was impervious to Ezra’s moods. “No, not a holiday. As of today, you’re officially on two weeks’ leave. All of you. You’ve been through a lot recently and you need some recovery time, and sometimes that’s not so easy to get when you’re stuck on base.” He laughed a little, comfortably. “Ask me how I know. Anyway, an old friend of mine’s also headed off on leave and she said she’d be happy to take you three home with her, give you some proper R & R. She’ll be swinging through here any time now, though, so you’ll need to get a move on.”
Sabine’s eyes narrowed. “Just a minute.” She swung around. “Three of us? What about you?”
For a moment Hera looked stern; then her eyes dropped and her shoulders drooped. She looked suddenly exhausted. “Kanan and I are staying here,” she said tiredly. “Please, don’t argue, Sabine. We’ll be fine. Just—go, rest, feel better, okay? I’ll see you soon.”
Which was when Zeb had closed a big hand on Ezra’s shoulder and marched him firmly out of the hold. Sabine had given in to Hera’s pleading look and followed, and now here they all were, sitting awkwardly in the hold of a creaky old shuttle with an ancient GNK droid gonking quietly to itself in one corner and not looking at it or each other as they got carted towards…well. Who knew?
“We’ll be dropping out of hyperspace soon,” called their pilot over her shoulder, a smile in her voice.
Ezra gave a loud, deliberately obnoxious sigh. “Finally.”
When Rex had mentioned a friend of his, Sabine had been expecting someone older—a veteran pilot, maybe, or a smuggler or bounty hunter from the Clone Wars days—not this sunny-haired woman a couple of years younger than Hera, who’d swung out of the shuttle’s cockpit with a cheery grin and hugged Rex enthusiastically before tipping her head towards the three of them and giving them a little wave, completely undaunted by their bleak faces. “Hello! I’m Omega. You must be Hera’s crew. Come on in.”
Old friend? Zeb had mouthed at Sabine. She’d just shrugged back.
The smile wasn’t just for greetings, it turned out. Four hyperspace jumps, and Omega had been relentlessly, terrifyingly cheerful and patient through all of them, no matter how rude Ezra got. Even talking over the comms she sounded happy, like air traffic control was an old friend it was nice to talk to again.
—You’re clear to land, Havoc-5. Have a good flight!
“Thanks, Deke. Say hi to the others for me!”
…okay, so apparently air traffic control was an old friend. Sabine rolled her eyes. Two weeks stuck in some backwater where everyone knew everyone. This is going to be such fun.
Ezra grunted. “I know who you are. You’re that pilot from Havoc Squad Hera talks about sometimes. Shouldn’t you be, like, Havoc Leader or something?”
His tone was a challenge, but Omega was apparently unflappable. “Not here, I’m not,” she replied, banking the shuttle into a smooth turn. “We’re coming in to land on Pabu now,” she added over her shoulder. “Sorry for the long flight, but we really don’t want to risk the Empire tracing us here.”
“What’s Pabu when it’s at home?” muttered Zeb.
“My home,” said Omega cheerfully, and gentled the shuttle further down. A shadow passed over the viewport; the shuttle flew into it, and there was a splash of sea-foam onto the viewscreen and Sabine barely had time to realise they were flying metres above an ocean before the shuttle slowed and turned into a cave and dropped—to land, thankfully—and the engines cut. “Come on!”
When they emerged into the cave there was somebody waiting in the shadows. Sabine nudged Zeb warily and felt him tense up too, but then whoever it was moved into the edge of a shaft of light and Omega gave a glad cry and started clambering briskly up the rocks. Squinting, Sabine saw a man, tall, thin, wrapped in a heavy robe and shawl, with hair as white as Rex’s bound in a long tail down his back and an old-fashioned pistol hanging from his belt, and his arms folded over his chest. She eyed him warily, hands hovering over her own weapons, but then Omega reached the top of the rocks and threw her arms around him in an enormous hug, and as he dropped his face against her hair and reached up with one arm to return the embrace Sabine looked awkwardly away, feeling like she’d been caught eavesdropping on a private conversation.
Then Omega pulled back a bit and sighed. “Gah. You’re all bones. Again. You need to eat!”
“You need to mind your business.” His voice was a worn rasp, but his hand on Omega’s shoulder gave its harshness the lie.
“You are my business,” Omega retorted, and stepped back and turned around. “Ah, never mind. This is my friend Hera’s crew that I told you about—Zeb Orrelios, Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren. And this is my—” Grandfather, Sabine filled in mentally “—little brother Crosshair,” Omega finished with an impish grin.
Wait, what?
“Little brother?” echoed Ezra, for once startled out of intentional rudeness.
The man—Crosshair—narrowed his eyes at Ezra. “You’re supposed to be smart. Figure it out.”
Sabine had just time enough to grasp that he wasn’t protesting the joke before Zeb’s low chuckle started up behind her. “What?” she snapped. It was always infuriating when one of them got a point before she did, though admittedly less so when it was Zeb; at least he was older.
He nudged her shoulder. “Look at them,” he said. “He’s a clone, Sabine. Like Rex. They’re both clones.”
And now he’d pointed it out she could see it—the similarities in the set of Omega’s eyebrows and Crosshair’s, their eyes, their builds and stances, that were very nearly identical once you got past the surface differences.
Ugh. Some artist’s eye she had.
Crosshair snorted. “Apparently he’s the smart one,” he told Ezra and swung around, adding, “Well, come if you’re coming,” over his shoulder as he started the shallow climb out of the cave.
Omega briefly closed her eyes. “It’s all right,” she said, and Sabine had a sudden flash of insight into exactly where her remarkable reserves of patience might have come from. “It’s not that he doesn’t like you. Well, he doesn’t dislike you. Yet. Crosshair’s just always found it difficult to talk to people, that’s all, especially people he doesn’t know. Come on! We’ll get you all set up at the house and then you can get out and enjoy the afternoon.” And she scrambled across the rocks after him.
The three of them looked at each other, and then Zeb shrugged and loped after her, and after a moment Sabine followed. As she broke out into a sunlit cove and stopped to stare up at the actual mountain looming above her, almost losing her balance on the slippery rock, Omega’s voice floated back to her above the hush of the waves: “Where’s Hunter? I knew Wrecker would probably be out with the fleet at this time of day, but—”
“Karr’s latest assistant called just after you did. Her mind’s starting to go. She wanted to come back here before it was too late. To talk to you. Hunter went to bring her in.”
There was a short pause, and then Omega said, “You can call her Emerie, you know.”
“Can I now.”
Another pause. “After all this time? Yes, I think you can.”
“We’ll see.”
Omega curled her hand through his elbow. “She can have my room. I’ll bunk in with the others for as long as I’m here.”
“No need,” replied Crosshair after a moment, so quietly Sabine almost couldn’t hear him, and Omega gave a soft Oh and fell silent, her head drooping.
After a little while Zeb realised the two of them weren’t talking any more and tactfully caught up to them, saying something to Omega as he did. She turned to him with what looked like gratitude and started pointing out things on the mountain above them, for all the world like a tour guide. Sabine shrugged to herself and stretched her legs to join them.
The two clones led the way up the mountain arm in arm, with Zeb on one side and Sabine on the other and Ezra huffing and puffing ostentatiously in their wake the whole way just as if he wasn’t a Jedi trainee who could get himself to the top of the thing in a half-dozen jumps if he chose, until they reached the house, three-quarters of the way up. It turned out to be two houses on either side of a little stone-paved patio that was absolutely stuffed with trees and chairs and climbing vines and flowering plants in a riot of colours that made Sabine stop in her tracks and catch her breath. An enormous elderly lurca hound lying in a patch of sun hauled itself to its feet when Omega appeared and gave a happy huff.
“Batcher! Hey, girl.” Omega dropped down to hug the thing, and laughed as it licked her from neck to hairline. “Good girl. Have you been taking care of them for me?” Another lick, and she scritched along the heavy crest atop the hound’s head. “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said as Crosshair opened the door of the house on the far side of the patio, and stood up. “This place has been closed up for a while—we were a key waystation on the clone underground for a long time, but we haven’t had anyone come through in several years now, and we don’t get that many offworld visitors—but it should be comfortable. Have an explore, make yourselves at home! There’s a kitchen and everything, so you can cook for yourselves if you want, but you’re all invited to dinner tonight. And every night, really. We like having guests.”
“Thanks!” Sabine called belatedly as the woman vanished into the other house on Crosshair’s heels. Zeb looked around briefly and then stretched his arms and cracked his shoulders and swung himself up onto the guest house roof, and a few seconds later peered back over the gutter with a grin.
“Bags I the sleepout,” he said smugly, and flopped back onto the roof.
Ezra just grunted and vanished into the guest house, and Sabine stood there amidst the flowers and leaves with her face tipped up to the sun, breathing their heavy scents and feeling the muscles in her shoulders start to ease, until something wormed its way into her brain and made her grab her helmet and bag and follow him.
Inside, the house was cool and shady, the cross-breeze from the windows carrying the scents of the garden through it. Sabine blinked a bit until her eyes adjusted and then went looking for Ezra.
She didn’t have to go far; with the apparent exception of Zeb’s sleepout, the bedrooms were more like little alcoves along two sides of the big main room, and only one had its door closed.
She knocked. “Ezra? Ezra!”
“What?” he snapped through the door after a moment.
“Ezra, are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Ezra. Seriously. There was a whole entire lurca hound out there—a friendly lurca hound—and you just walked right past her. Are you sure you’re feeling well?”
For a second the door slid open and Ezra glared up glared at her. “Maybe if it was a loth-hound,” he snapped, and vanished again.
Loth-hound? “Are there even loth-hounds?” she called, but there was no reply, so she shrugged—there seemed to be loth-everything-elses, so why not?—and left him to whatever he was doing, and went to claim the alcove as far away from his as possible.
She’d been sitting on the end of the bed breathing salt air and staring through the window at some of the bluest blues she’d ever seen for what felt like hours when suddenly a big booming cry of “Hey, where’s my girl!” split the air and jolted her back to herself, wondering confusedly when Rex had arrived and how. Then:
“Wrecker!” she heard Omega yell as footsteps thudded on flagstones.
Okay. A different clone. How many of them were there, tucked away on this island? Sabine stood up and stretched, wincing as her shoulders cracked under her armour, and went to find out.
The answer, she realised as she stepped out onto the patio just in time to see another man who looked exactly like Rex except for having a full head of hair and a heavy grey beard stepping into the open door of the main house, was at least four—or five, assuming the Hunter that Omega and Crosshair had talked about was a clone too. She stepped closer, around the drowsing Batcher, but the scene she glimpsed through the door made her suddenly feel awkward about just walking in: Omega and a big, powerfully built, shaven-headed old man with a cybernetic eye and heavy scars standing at one end of the big table and filleting a pair of fish with easy skill, Crosshair seated closer to the door chopping vegetables, and the new arrival stopping to drop a hand to his shoulder, making him look up, the severe line of his mouth softening slightly. A family, easy together. It made her throat feel tight.
“How was clinic?” asked Crosshair, and the newcomer smiled.
“Quiet, for a change.” Then he looked down and sighed. “I wish you’d use—”
“I use it when I need it, and I don’t need it now,” said Crosshair in his rasp of a voice and went back to chopping vegetables, which was when Sabine realised, wide-eyed, that he only had one hand, the left one, and his right arm ended in a neat, seamed stump.
All that time following him up the mountain and she hadn’t even noticed. He hid it startlingly well.
The other clone sighed again and dropped a kiss onto his hair, which made Sabine’s eyes open even wider, and went to wash his hands in the sink.
Then Omega looked up from laying slabs of fish into a dish filled with marinade and smiled. “Sabine! Come in and meet everyone!” she called, and Sabine couldn’t avoid it any longer.
She hovered on the threshold for a minute, awkwardly. “I, um, don’t know how to cook. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, we’re almost done. Now, this—” She leaned sideways to hug the big man beside her, keeping her fishy hands clear “—is my brother Wrecker, and this—” with a nod at the clone wiping his hands on a towel “—is Crosshair’s husband Gower. My other brother Hunter and my sister Emerie will be back in a couple of rotations too.”
“Oh. Hi!” Sabine waved at them, awkwardly, and Wrecker gave a sudden hoot of laughter.
“You’re rubbing off on her already, kid!” Then he put down his knife and beamed at her. “You’re a Mandalorian, yeah? Nice armour! Did ya see it, Crosshair?”
“Yes,” Crosshair said, and scooped the last of his vegetables into a dish and started chopping herbs instead.
“Remind you of anything?”
“It’s more colourful than ours was.”
“I painted it myself,” Sabine snapped before she could help herself, but Crosshair just said, “So I assumed,” and went on chopping.
The silence stretched out for a minute before Gower sat down by Crosshair’s shoulder and pushed a basket of fruit and a small knife across the table towards Sabine. “C’mon, help me peel these,” he said easily, and she shrugged and sat down across from him to try.
When they moved out onto the patio to cook Zeb came swinging down from the sleepout, and the round of introductions and explanations started all over again. Sabine wandered away with the tray of sliced and skewered fruit still braced against her hip, looking out over the low, vine-covered fence towards the lowering sun and the sea. The colours streaking the sky were so intense they almost hurt, but she couldn’t look away until she realised the smell of cooking food had finally drawn Ezra out of his room, if not his foul mood, and turned back to add the fruit to the low table before there was no space left on it.
That was when she saw them on the opposite wall, half-hidden behind vines and dishes and bustling clones: bright swirls and splashes of paint, in shapes she couldn’t work out and colours that didn’t quite go together, that seemed to mean something she couldn’t understand. Her eyes kept trailing back to them as the fish cooked and the sun sank and Wrecker and Gower lighted the lamps strung overhead, and everybody sat down to eat and listen to Omega share all the gossip it was safe to pass on from her base, and it kept itching more and more on her nerves.
I’ll look at it properly in the morning, she told herself tiredly, and sat back and closed her eyes.