Chapter Text
FOUND: CHAPTER 1
They’d been searching for what felt like centuries. Countless planets and worlds across the galaxy, many they’d never heard of before their journey. There had been dozens of meetings in sketchy little backwater cantinas with informants over the course of the time they’d been looking. Some of those who they met with had helpful things to say and some were nothing more than low-grade scum looking to cause trouble.
They’d received help from hundreds of different allies and new friends, but they’d also met their fair share of hostility. Thankfully, they never met a threat that they couldn’t deal with. Most people didn’t like to cause trouble with a Mandalorian and a former Jedi, but even those who did were quickly made aware of the stupidity of their decision.
The Mandalorian, Sabine Wren, thought back on all of their adventures so far, as she sat in the cockpit of Ahsoka Tano’s ship, watching the blue streaks of hyperspace go by. If she was honest with herself, she had to admit that they were both starting to get a little discouraged. It seemed as though they’d exhausted nearly all of their resources at this point.
Even if we have, I’m not giving up , she thought to herself. Neither Ahsoka nor Sabine was going to give up on searching for Ezra Bridger, he meant too much to the both of them.
To Ahsoka, he’d been someone she mentored in the ways of the Force. While he hadn’t been her padawan, she had been able to teach him many things that she’d learned on her travels around the galaxy after leaving the Jedi order. She had worked closely with him and his master, Kanan Jarrus, in the early days of the Rebellion, and she had cherished that time spent with other Force wielders. It wasn’t something she’d been able to experience often since Order 66.
Besides that, Ezra had saved her life when he used the World Between Worlds to rescue her from a duel with Darth Vader on Malachor. It was a debt that she felt needed to be repaid, and she was happy to oblige.
Sabine’s relationship and history with Ezra were a bit more complex. They had lived together for several years on the Ghost, and they’d grown very close throughout that time, ultimately becoming best friends. Sabine had watched him grow up, both physically and emotionally, from the scrawny and bratty kid that he’d been when they picked him up on Lothal.
When they first met, Ezra developed a pretty annoying crush on Sabine, but those feelings had faded over time as the two of them became closer. Their crew was like a family, and Sabine desperately missed those days that she, Kanan, Ezra, Hera, Zeb, and Chopper had spent together. It had been a simpler time, even in the midst of a Rebellion.
Ezra and Sabine’s friendship hadn’t been forced, but it had been incredibly helpful throughout their years together. The connection they had was forged by the many deadly missions and dangerous tasks they’d taken on side-by-side, but also by the quiet, almost “normal” in-between moments they’d spent together on the Ghost.
By the time that Ezra sacrificed himself to save the Ghost crew and the rest of the Rebels on Lothal, he’d become a powerful, wise, and grounded Jedi. He had developed some incredible leadership skills. Coupled with unmatched bravery, he’d been able to take out the Empire’s entire 7th Fleet in a move that even Grand Admiral Thrawn hadn’t seen coming.
His sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. If the Rebels hadn’t been able to take down Thrawn, then defeating the Empire would’ve been a much greater challenge and the war might’ve still been going on.
But even though Ezra had been dragged off into hyperspace by purrgil, Sabine knew that he was still alive. He was out there somewhere, waiting to be rescued, and it was time to bring him home.
The thought gave her courage as she waited impatiently to get through this long journey they were taking today. They’d been in hyperspace for hours and Sabine was getting bored of staring at basically nothing through the viewport. She had volunteered to stay in the cockpit while Ahsoka slept, just in case anything unexpected happened on their trip. In fact, unexpected events had become pretty common throughout their quest.
They were on their way to an unnamed planet in the furthest reaches of the outer rim, basically in wild space. They’d received the coordinates for the planet from a contact on one of their recent meet-ups and they’d been searching for information about it ever since.
From what the two of them could tell, no one knew very much about this place. There was no documented information on the climate of this planet, the culture, or even what species lived there. While the lack of details was disturbing, it seemed like the perfect place for a Jedi to have been stranded for the last several years.
Thankfully, they’d be coming out of hyperspace within the next hour, then the real fun could start. This region of space was likely to be tricky to navigate, and so it was probably going to take some skillful piloting and teamwork. If Ahsoka didn’t wake soon, Sabine planned to go get her up so that they could prepare.
Almost as if Ahsoka could read Sabine’s mind, a moment later she showed up in the doorway of the cockpit, dressed and well-rested.
“How has it been going?” Ahsoka asked, sitting down in the pilot’s seat beside Sabine.
“Pretty boring. Which I guess, for us, is good. We haven’t had any problems so far,” Sabine admitted.
“That is good,” the former Jedi replied. “How long until we leave hyperspace?”
“From my calculations, about 47 minutes.”
“Great. I’ll take over here until then if there’s anything you need to do before the fun part begins,” Ahsoka said, nodding towards the door.
“Thanks. I think I’m going to get a shower and then make sure my weapons are ready. Who knows what we’ll face on this planet.” Sabine got up from her seat and headed back to the room that she’d claimed on Ahsoka’s ship.
She took off her armor plates, laying them on her bed. Picking out a fresh set of clothes, she headed down the hall to the refresher.
As the warm water poured over her body in the shower, her thoughts dwelt on Ezra. Would they find him here? She didn’t want to get her hopes up since she’d been let down so many times before. But, if this lead didn’t work out, they weren’t really sure where to go next.
She wondered what Ezra had been doing all these years. Had he been all alone? Had he been with Thrawn? What was his living situation like? But the one that bugged her the most -- had he given up hope for Sabine to find him? It had been so long since he left, and maybe he thought now that she’d never come.
Sabine shook her head, tearing the thought from her mind. Once they found Ezra, he would know that she’d been searching for him and he would understand. It didn’t do her any good to stress herself with these things. No matter what they faced today, she needed her head to be clear.
After Sabine finished her shower, got dressed, and prepped her weaponry for the day’s adventures, she met Ahsoka back in the cockpit with 5 minutes to spare.
“You ready?” Ahsoka asked her.
“I would be more ready if I knew what I was facing,” Sabine answered honestly. But hey, that’s never stopped us before.”
They came out of hyperspace, and the sight that they were greeted with made them both gasp. They were in one of the most beautiful sections of space they’d ever seen, where the sky was a rainbow of navy, blue, purple, and black and littered with thousands of stars.
They manually piloted the ship through a small asteroid field and after a few minutes, they came in sight of a planet.
The planet was just as beautiful as the rest of the sky -- it was green and blue mostly but contained some patches of red and purple that the two women assumed were desert and mountains. The planet as a whole wasn’t very large, but it looked like a truly lovely place to live.
“So what do we do now?” Sabine asked as they approached the unfamiliar place.
“I suppose we just enter the atmosphere and scout out the land from above. If we notice any settlements, we can start there,” Ahsoka answered.
Ahsoka piloted the ship into the planet’s atmosphere and closer to the surface. They flew above the terrain, and it was every bit as stunning up close as it had been from space. It was lined with every type of environment they could think of: mountains, small deserts, forests, lakes, and beaches along the large ocean. The one thing it was missing was snow.
However, despite the beautiful climate, it seemed that the planet was largely uninhabited by intelligent life. They flew for an hour, searching the ground below for any signs, and couldn’t find anything that looked like civilization.
“What a shame. With such a beautiful planet, you’d think some people would want to live here,” Ahsoka said with a sigh.
“Yeah. But we haven’t searched everywhere. Let’s head back towards the forest, there were some streams there. It seemed like one of the more welcoming places to live,” Sabine requested.
Ahsoka turned the ship around and they headed back to the forest, this time flying along further east than they had before. As they passed over the tops of the trees, they came in sight of a large clearing, and Sabine noticed what looked to be a group of huts.
“Over there!” she said, pointing toward the huts. “I think there’s a little village down there. Maybe we can ask them about Ezra!” Her excitement and anxiety levels were both increasing rapidly.
They came upon the village slowly, not wanting to scare the locals. Landing the ship in a clearing nearby, they walked through a group of trees to reach the huts.
As they moved into the larger clearing, they were greeted by a species they’d never seen before, standing with spears pointed in their direction. The alien species seemed to be similar to humans, but with orange-ish skin, claws on their fingers, and large bumps on the tops of their heads that Sabine supposed were their ears.
The two women knew that they could likely handle this group of natives if it came to violence, but they wanted to start with diplomacy first if at all possible. Simultaneously, they raised their hands up in front of their bodies to show that they meant no harm.
Ahsoka spoke first. “Do you speak Basic?” she asked, although she was already pretty sure of the answer.
One of the aliens stepped forward and spoke back, but not in any language either of them had ever heard.
“Well, I guess that answers that,” Sabine said sarcastically.
“We’re looking for a friend,” Ahsoka said to them, gesturing the best she could to explain her meaning.
The head of the tribe clearly didn’t understand, because he spoke angrily back to her, using an assortment of phrases and noises that neither Ahsoka nor Sabine could comprehend.
Over the next several minutes, Sabine tried speaking to the group in every outer rim language that she could think of, considering she’d learned quite a few during her time at the Imperial Academy on Mandalore. Each attempt was met with more confusing responses from the locals, and Sabine was starting to get frustrated.
“How do we ask them about Ezra if they can’t understand us?!” she asked Ahsoka. In her irritation, she lifted the Mandalorian helmet off of her head.
The entire tribe of locals gasped out loud, all staring at Sabine.
Some of them pointed in her direction while others whispered, and even shouted, frantically in their language. The leader looked at her with surprise and shock, then started speaking rapidly to her, gesturing wildly.
“What’s going on?” Sabine asked Ahsoka.
“I don’t know, but it has something to do with you taking off your helmet.”
The tribe leader realized that Sabine had no idea what he was saying, so he turned to some of the others standing on his right side, spoke to them for a moment, then turned back to Sabine and Ahsoka. He gestured for them to follow him, and the crowd parted ways, allowing their leader to walk back in the direction of the huts.
Hesitantly, the two women followed the clan, keeping a close eye on their spears as they were led past the huts. Neither of them was sure where they were headed, but they walked through the entire village and into another section of forest before they started to get concerned.
“Where do you think we’re going?” Ahsoka asked.
“Not sure,” Sabine replied. “Maybe they’re trying to show us something.”
As they marched further through the trees, the entire tribe behind them, Sabine noticed that they were approaching what looked to be another dwelling. A hut, much different from the rest, was settled on a small hill ahead of them. The hill was set above a rocky riverbank and surrounded by more trees.
They were a few meters away from the hut when the leader of the group signaled them to stop. Ahsoka and Sabine obeyed, waiting right where they were. The head of the tribe walked forward to the entrance of the hut, then called out to someone inside.
They watched as the alien had a conversation in his native tongue with someone they couldn’t see, then noticed him gesture in their direction. The leader stepped back from the doorway, allowing the hut’s owner to come out into the open.
Sabine’s heart stopped.
Standing at the entrance to the hut, wearing old clothes that were tattered and torn and sporting long hair and an impressive beard, was Ezra.
Sabine watched the look of realization dawn on Ezra’s face as he recognized the two newcomers. His face lit up completely with relief and joy, and even from a distance, she could tell that his eyes were welling up with tears.
She took a few steps forward and he followed into the open, meeting her halfway. The two of them exchanged a look that contained so many emotions it was impossible to pinpoint them all, then embraced in a tight hug.
They broke apart from the hug after what seemed to be several minutes. Ezra looked down into Sabine’s face, and she noticed that he was even taller now than he’d been when he disappeared. “You found me,” he said with a smile.
“You can always count on me,” Sabine replied, smiling back.
He slowly let her go, then turned to Ahsoka, who’d walked up beside them. The two of them shared a hug as well, albeit a much shorter one. “Ahsoka, it’s great to see you!” he exclaimed.
“Great to see you too, Ezra! You’ve changed quite a lot since our last encounter.”
“Yeah, well, several years on a planet in wild space will make a guy look a little rough around the edges, I’m sure,” he chuckled.
“Are you ready to come home?” Sabine asked him, catching his attention again.
“More than you’ll ever know.” He gave her another smile before continuing. “Unfortunately, it’s getting close to nightfall and there are pretty bad atmospheric storms here at night. It’ll probably be best if we wait to leave until morning.”
“Okay. I’d hate for us all to die in a ship crash right after finding you. I’ll go see if I can beam a transmission to let the others know we found you.” Ahsoka turned and headed back to the ship.
“The others?” Ezra asked Sabine.
“Yeah, you know, Hera, Rex, Zeb, anybody really. They’ve all been keeping up with our search.”
The idea of the people he loved most waiting for him to come home made his heart swell. He grinned broader than he had in years, feeling more joy than he’d ever felt while living on this planet.
A thought occurred to him, then he turned to the locals and had a short conversation with the leader in their language. They nodded in response, then turned to walk back to their village, leaving Ezra and Sabine alone.
“What did you say?” Sabine asked.
“I told them that you two were my friends and that you were here to rescue me. I thanked them for helping me out all these years and letting me live peacefully nearby. They wished us well on our journey home,” he explained.
Ezra led Sabine over to his hut. As they walked inside, she took a look around, noticing how Ezra had made this place his home. He’d fashioned a bed in the corner, and there was a collection of what looked to be homemade cooking utensils sitting on a wooden shelf by the wall.
On another shelf nearby, there were some clothes folded neatly that looked oddly similar to what the natives had been wearing, designed with bold prints and vibrant colors. Ezra noticed her eyeing them. “What, you can’t expect me to wear these old rags all the time, can you?” he smirked.
“No, I suppose not. It’s okay, I like them...they’re colorful,” Sabine said with a smile.
“Well, then I’ll bring them with me. The locals made them for me after I’d been here about a year and proved that I hadn’t come to kill them all.”
“You speak their language well. Did they teach you?” Sabine asked curiously.
“Not at first. I picked up some words and phrases here and there and I slowly started to understand what they were saying. One day, I surprised them by joining in on a conversation they were having. It made them so happy that they decided to teach me more,” he told her.
“And you lived with them all this time?”
“Not really with them,” he said. “I was more like a friendly neighbor who lived nearby. I didn’t really want to be a part of their tribe, but we got along well. All it took was some thoughtful gift-giving here and there and I managed to win them over.”
Sabine was about to ask more questions about their customs, but then she remembered how they’d acted when she and Ahsoka had arrived. “Why did they bring us to you? What did they tell you?”
“Their leader said that he’d seen your ship landing nearby and that they’d been trying to figure out why you were here, but that you didn’t speak the language. When you took your helmet off and he saw what you looked like, he realized that you were the same species as me and I might be able to help. As soon as he told me there was a girl in a helmet, I knew it had to be you,” he finished, looking into her eyes with a deep appreciation.
Sabine returned the look. “Well, I’m glad I took my helmet off then, because otherwise, they were going to spear us,” she said with a small laugh.
Sabine watched as Ezra gathered up his belongings from around the small one-room building. Among them, she noticed his orange jacket that had been his accessory of choice during their time on the Ghost. She picked it up.
“Are you not still wearing this every day?” she asked him playfully. “I seem to recall that it was your favorite.”
“Well, I kinda outgrew it. It doesn’t really fit me anymore,” he replied, continuing to sort through the room for anything he might want to bring along.
As he shifted around, Sabine eyed him carefully. Sure, she’d noticed the few inches he’d grown and the changes in his hair, but she hadn’t yet taken a moment to notice his physique. Not only was he taller, but he’d put on quite a bit of muscle as well. She noticed now that the sleeves on his tee were bulging and that the shirt was pulled tight across his chest. No wonder he’d needed the locals to make him new clothes.
But, in all honesty, she didn’t mind the changes one bit. Sure, he was a little scruffy-looking and could probably go with a haircut and a shave, but in her judgment, he’d become substantially more attractive over the time they spent apart. Sabine wasn’t typically one to stare at guys, but she caught herself giving Ezra a serious once-over.
“Okay, I think that’s everything that I need.” Ezra’s words snapped Sabine back to reality and she quickly looked away, not wanting him to catch her staring.
“Great! We can stay tonight on Ahsoka’s ship and head out in the morning, once the storms have passed.”
As Sabine led the way back to Ahsoka’s ship, the two chatted away happily, Ezra asking all kinds of questions about what had happened in his absence. She told him about defeating the Empire and how much his sacrifice had meant to Lothal and the Rebellion at large. She explained Hera’s pregnancy and told him all about Kanan’s son, Jacen. She shared the stories of all their friends and promised him that they’d visit every last one of them.
Even though they were still stuck on this remote planet, it was as if Ezra had never left at all. And as they chatted, sharing stories and laughing with each other, both of them were happier than they’d been in a long time.