#well enough that his Crew recognizes the change in his posture or angle of his brows and they start moving before he can even shout at them

[spotinthespiral]

Griffin on the brain (Oc Lore Dump below the Cut!)

Griffin Wright. He was raised by a member of Markeybone's smuggling ring. Everyone on those ships was held to a high standard... besides him. Griffin was a daddy's boy, and rarely got disciplined for being lax and casual, even to the highest of officers. (Almost like Griffin was a stray mutt that his Father cherished.)

When he did get disciplined though, it was always serious. He was taught that, when it mattered, there was no time for goofing around. And it worked out for him. The moment he was old enough, he took up his duty, he took over his father's position, and he was great at it.

Imagine the surprise for his new smuggling crew when their happy-go-lucky and lax captain sees a ship on the horizon and immediately barks orders. When they go ignored at first, he fires his gun at the deck near slacking crew members abd swear the next one won't miss if they don't to their stations. He steers them narrowly out of the range if this Bounty Hunter vessel and books it to Skull Island to lay low.

He's scary when he needs to be, because that's how his father taught him to be. And any more? The crew doesn't play around when Griffin is serious about something.

[lluvguts]

“...secrets?” // byler

pairing: eleven / mike wheeler & will byers / mike wheeler

warnings: none!

word count: 2693

summary: Where Eleven snoops around Mike's house and finds a peculiar journal entry.

Eleven grew tired of sitting in the blanket fort, waiting for Mike’s watch to say the three numbers he told her earlier— ”When this read 3:15. Three, one, five. Got that, El?” Mike adjusted the digital watch to her wrist with soft, sweaty fingers— and letting her stomach settle the burnt Eggos he snuck back from breakfast.

“Just stay here in the basement, Eleven. So it’s a secret. And eat these waffles, understand?” Mike was staring at her with intense eyes, ones Eleven knew were filled with curiosity at her; those deep brown eyes; they were fixed on her face, on her puzzled stare, only belonging to the boy who saved her. Her friend. But Mike’s eyes led her to believe that maybe he found something more than a friend there, in her gaze. His looks were too deliberate and his gestures too sudden and eager—of the three boys who had rescued her, Mike was the only one willing to communicate, make her feel at home—and even if the other two thought she was stupid, Eleven knew better than to assume this boy sitting next to her thought of her as only a friend.

She herself was unsure what she felt, what she thought of him. No words came to her aid. A blank, soundless mind.

Eleven understood his words. Stay. Eat. It was but the one sentence that made the bite of waffle she had chewed off cling to the back of her throat.

“Secret?” She asked, letting the packaged Eggo return to her lap. Mike’s expression changed, once kind and assertive; now confused. It was a look Eleven had often recalled on the many faces of those around her—before. Especially her Papa, the white-haired man that occupied every vacant space in her mind, breeding intrusive thoughts of other places and nightmares she had no way of forgetting. A gentleness painted on the man that was quickly met with irritation when she did not comprehend a task.

But these new people, new faces, were different. Mike was different, she was sure of it. His thoughts and emotions were obvious for anyone to see. Sensitive and on display.

Too exposed.

“What?” Mike’s voice broke her from the memory. He leaned forward, just barely. From this close Eleven could discern every one of his freckles, on those pale cheeks tinged with blush, lashes dark and just as visible as the straight, raven-colored hair that framed his face.

“What is secret?” Eleven repeated the question, the word was familiar on her tongue, but had no meaning, no flavor. Dull and lifeless like the many things she found herself unable to remember.

Mike’s legs shifted on the blanket, searching the wall for an answer, as if it had one.

"A secret is something that no one else can know about,” he replied slowly, making sure she caught everything.

“I am a secret?”

“No! Of course not. Well, not exactly—” He assumed a body posture she did not like: too quickly did his shoulders rise to shrug, his face a notch above where it should be—looking at her—and mind clearly elsewhere. It made her feel unwanted—a weirdo, a stray dog—and that she was wasting his time with her questions. Did Mike not want to explain? Why must she stay in the blanket fort? Eleven wondered with hidden frustration. The bad men couldn’t infiltrate the confines of this house, the stability that Eleven needed it to have. Not even the other things, the screams she heard in her sleep from the Upside Down. Not yet.

All of her questions were lost past communication: so many words and phrases and meanings entirely taken from her, unable to speak them aloud.

“Michael! You better be up here right now if you don’t want to be late for school!” A voice shouted from upstairs, making Eleven flinch and cast wide, frightened eyes at the ceiling.

Mike set a hand on her sleeve to reassure her—and she paid careful attention to the fact that he did not touch her. Was he afraid of her abilities, that could stun an entire room? Like everyone else was?

“It’s just my mom. I’ll see you later, okay? Remember: three, one, five, El.” And with that he was gone, only leaving Eleven to reflect on his words—even the unsaid ones—and finish her breakfast.

But by that time Eleven was no longer hungry. More sounds echoed from above, she listened intently under the cover of blankets to every thud of footsteps and pinging clatter of dishes until the house settled into a comforting silence when the watch read one-zero. The only thing that stilled her racing heart was the repetitive blink of that watch, its numbers flashing in red light. A color that made Eleven’s eyes burn when she stared at it for too long, too closely, her pounding vision ringed in scarlet.

She didn’t want to stay in the basement, even if Mike said so. She wanted to discover other foreign things in the house, like whose voice accompanied what room, what his family looked like, where Mike slept. The image she constructed of his face shrouded in sleep—innocent features undisturbed, not a sign of worry or a frown—made her blush. Eleven smiled down at the Eggo’s crinkly plastic in her hands, surrounded by the speckled grey of someone else’s sweatpants; her shirtsleeve crusted with a coppery red from the ghost of old blood.

Not now. She couldn’t allow herself to dwell on it, her “superpowers.” A term the boys often used for it—either in amazement or fear she did not know. Eleven shook her head, if only they knew it was anything but a gift. They were right to be afraid.

Out of habit, she checked the numbers again: 12:37. Too early to leave out the back door, but just enough time to creep upstairs with no one home yet. The stairs were carpeted, mysterious blue steps that led her up into the house, soothing her bare feet. Once above ground, Eleven stood at the base of the kitchen’s hard tile and stared in awe. Many things reminded her of Mike, and possibly the other voices she heard during her stay: dirtied dishes, a child’s plaything, an old house phone suspended on the kitchen wall and backed by creamy floral wallpaper. Signs of life. Family.

Home was a far off place, invisible to her reach. She searched her mind for a taste of it, trying to force the past out of her, but the emptiness was inescapable; it only brought a blistering headache and the all-too-familiar faint feeling Eleven often adapted to for the past twelve years.

Somewhere in the living room a clock trilled the time: 1:00. How long had she been standing there? Eleven wiped her face, her sleeve returned wet with tears she did not know where there and the speckled dots of a nosebleed. The smell of blood burned in her nostrils, salty and pungent. It made her sick.

She spun on her heels and went to the staircase, hoping Mike’s room was somewhere up there. It felt wrong in some ways, like a burglar stepping into a stranger’s house; her stomach twisted with guilt but still she climbed up the stairs until she reached the landing, it’s walls covered with photographs. Mike’s face popped up in random ones, surrounded by people Eleven did not recognize. His smile was etched into the lips of other people, an older woman with thin brown hair she assumed was his mother. Sister with her arms around a much younger mike. Her pretty face, her prettier body. The final photograph stopped Eleven dead: the three boys, all standing around a podium, joined by a fourth.

Chestnut brown hair that curved around a kind face. Shy, expressive eyes stared back at Eleven. In a sudden moment of realization the face of the boy matched his voice, his shrieks of pain. The remnants of her time in the Upside Down were already fading but even still the sounds of his screams resonated with her, weeks after. The boy trapped in the other world. Will Byers.

It all began to make sense. This was who went missing, who the others were searching for. Eleven shuddered with emotion, with empathy for this boy: having to survive with the torment of the monsters in the Upside Down, the constant disillusionment, fearful frustration of not being seen. Completely alone.

Eleven’s finger landed on Will’s face in the photo, covering it.

“Hide,” she whispered.

Across the gallery was a series of bedroom doors, mostly shut but some left open. One final look at Will was enough; Eleven left the memories suspended in time, and headed towards the hallway.

Mike’s room was first, it's door left cracked. She knew this mainly because of its assortment of comic books and small figurines that matched the ones in the basement—and partially due to the smell: Mike had given Eleven his navy blue crew neck to wear that first day, it filled her blood-caked nostrils with his boyish scent. Again she caught her cheeks flame, standing at the threshold of his room, on the outside looking in.

With a cautious step she set a foot on the carpet. Apart from the mess the room was very intriguing to Eleven, with the exciting posters tacked on every available space, school books left in a haphazard pile by the bed, clothes strewn about, a lone mirror leaning against the wall. She crept inside the room completely and stood at the mirror’s length.

What was peering back left her speechless. A thin, androgynous figure with slouched shoulders stared ahead, hair shaved, a look of horror and alarm crossing its face. Eleven knew it was her—the borrowed clothes, the grime of tears and blood. It was her own eyes that startled her: dark and off-balance, like she did not trust herself. Like she was staring into the soul of a stranger.

She let her eyes trail across the glass until they landed on something tucked at an odd angle under Mike’s bed. Turning around, she knelt  beside the bed frame and touched the corner of the object—cool leather met her curious fingers, inviting her—until she found herself holding the item. It was a notebook. Eleven flipped the pages, poring over every passage undeniably in Mike’s handwriting. Although she was incapable of understanding some of the phrases, the entries were easily read until Eleven’s fingers stopped on the final page.

The latest entry, dated a few days ago. She read carefully, tracing the letters with the pad of her finger to feel them as she went, fascinated by the indents in his disorganized scrawl.

I won’t let myself believe he’s gone. Gone as in dead. He isn’t dead. He can’t be. But why is everyone acting like he is? Are they searching for Will because they feel bad? It’s the only excitement this town has had in years? That’s pretty shitty.

On the way to find Will, to find answers, we met a girl. I thought she was a boy at first. Her hair was cut really short. It was pouring buckets and Dustin was still arguing about turning back when we found her. Damn, did she look scared. Shaking like crazy. We took her back to my house, even though Lucas and Dustin didn’t want to. They said she was a freak, a weirdo. I wasn’t sure. She seemed nice enough for a girl who doesn’t talk. Eleven. That was her name. How weird? Who names their kid some number? Even more reason for the guys to be worried. I didn’t think it mattered, when she was cleaned up she looked really pretty. What’s that word on the vocab test in English? Stunning.

I tried to tell them she just needed a place to stay but they said I was crazy, that Eleven was crazy too. Just because Will’s gone and everything, now I have someone else to obsess over, they said. That isn’t true. I don’t obsess over him. It’s not like that.

But maybe I did? That day after school, when it was just him and I. Will was telling me about how the older kids were pushing him to the ground, calling him names. Faggot. Queer. He hated them for it. I almost said, ‘But Will, you aren’t a queer’ but as I started to talk he turned on his bike to stare at me. It made my stomach flip, why did it do that? Like stupid butterflies and crap. He looked at me like he knew I was lying. Like maybe I was lying too. To myself. But that’s a secret Will couldn’t tell, not to anyone except for me.

And now Eleven’s here. She’s asleep down in the basement. As I write this I don’t know what to think. I miss him in a way I didn’t think I could. Like a piece of mt is gone. God, that sounds sappy, huh? Great, now the kids are gonna call me names worse than Frogface. Say I like one of my best friends, the boy who might be dead.

But do I stop them? Are they wrong? I can’t get his face out of my head and it’s messing me up. I wish I could have said something that last night, when it was just Will and I. He was keeping a secret too.

The words ended there, but Eleven reread the page to make sure she didn’t miss what she thought she read. Mike Wheeler, the boy who found her in the rain, had secrets? Elven thought they were friends.

“Friends don’t lie,” she told herself, and the pages that said Mike liked Will. They also said that Mike liked Eleven too, and her heart hammered out a disjointed beat at that. Could you like your friends? In a way that was more? Eleven squeezed her eyes shut in concentration, trying to form the words that would make sense of it all. Mike was friends with Will, but there was something to his journal that was laden with different emotion too foggy for Eleven to fully grasp.

She opened her eyes. It was the same way she felt for Mike, that distant feeling. She relished in the fact that she knew something no one else did, but was shocked as well: are friends allowed to hide things like this? Keep locked away the shy smiles, the stares at one another, the rapid hearts? Friends but different.

A echoey toll sounded from downstairs, and for a shaky moment Eleven forgot about the time; she jumped at the noise and the notebook fell from her hands. It clattered to the floor with a soft thud and a rustle of paper. Eleven stared down at the black notebook for a long while, pondering over what she had read. Was it a secret she had snuck upstairs? No one had to know she was up here at all. But an outside grumble of a motor rolling up the driveway sent Eleven frantically back down the stairs, jumping the last few steps, and dashing into the basement. She retreated into the blanket fort and wrapped the sheets over her body. Her heart pounded with dread at the opening of a door, the preceding footsteps. A lively voice on the phone.

“Oh no, I don’t have to pick up Michael today. Stop by anytime. Yes, he’s with his friends,” the woman chattered. Eleven was trapped.

The numbers read: 3:08. It was too late now. She found herself once again stuck with her thoughts, staring at the same Eggo waffle wrapper. Wondering how she got stuck in a house she didn’t belong in, reading things that weren’t for her, feelings she couldn’t put into words.

Now Eleven knew two things: friend feelings, but ones that can be twisted into something else. An old word, with new meaning.

Maybe, Eleven thoughts, Mike hiding her in the basement was a secret, and Mike liking the boy in the other world was one, too.

[hydrospanners]

archiban frodrick’s kennel He was a vet, she had a ginx, could I make it any more obvious? Or the one where Doc is a vet and Rea has a late night pet emergency and things go the way they always do no matter what universe they're in. SWTOR Vet AU. F!Jedi Knight x Doc. Much fluff, a little sin, a lot of absurdity. 2600 words. AO3. I’m so so sorry.

He’s refilling his caf when he notices the snow. A rush of white flakes, tinkling like bells as they slant against the lobby window. It lays in drifts nearly half a meter deep already and building fast.

 Looks like it’ll be another night spent at the office.

 Doc wraps his fingers around the warm mug and tries to talk himself into shoveling a path out to the pens in the back. They’re heated and usually unsupervised at this hour anyway, but since he’s already here--

 A flood of blinding white light pours through the front window. Gilded plaques and framed holos rattle on their hooks as the walls around him start to tremble, a sound like thunder rumbling overhead. He raises his arm against the light, trying to squint past it to the source. He can’t see anything but the snow, blowing against the window in impenetrable sheets of white.

 This might be one of the tamer places he’s settled, but Doc hasn’t made it this far in life by being stupid. He drops to hands and knees and crawls behind the receptionist’s desk, pressing his palm to the safe hidden below. The blaster inside is a cold, familiar weight in his hand.

 Someone pounds at the front door and he clicks off the safety, letting his finger rest on the guard as he peeks over the desk. The snow outside has settled, and he can see the outline of a ship idling in the parking lot. An honest-to-stars cargo freighter. In the parking lot.

 Squinting, he can make out a figure at the door cast in shadow by the ship’s lights. A humanoid figure, cradling a pretty big bundle of something in their arms.

 It’s a posture Doc knows pretty well.

 He leaves the blaster on the desk.

 A wave of snow and piercing cold rushes through the doors as he keys in the code for release. A human woman stumbles in after, brown hair blowing in the wind, trembling from head to toe and clutching a creature in obvious respiratory distress tight to her chest. She isn’t dressed for the weather, wearing only a light, beat-up jacket and some fingerless gloves, but she’s taken better care of the patient. Whatever it is, it’s wrapped tight in layers of thick, protective blankets.

 “Please tell me you aren’t a fucking janitor,” she says.

 Doc would laugh if the creature in her arms wasn’t actively choking on its own throat. “With hands like these?” He displays them--they are excellent hands--in a gesture something like supplication before reaching for the patient. He hasn’t failed to notice the blasters on her hips, and he knows better than to startle someone upset and well-armed. “Who do we have here?”

 “Pooper,” the woman says, completely straight-faced. “I don’t know what happened. I mean, he’s always had trouble breathing when he gets excited, but this time--I don’t know. It’s different. He isn’t calming down and it’s getting worse and I--Can you help?”

 She lets him take the hyperventilating bundle from her arms, and when he peels back the blankets he finds the four red eyes of a barbed ginx blinking back at him.

 Huh.

 “We don’t see many fellas like you in these parts,” Doc hums, holding Pooper more firmly as he starts to wriggle in the stranger’s hands.

 “I picked him up on Makeb,” the woman explains, reaching out to stroke the ginx’s forehead. It changes the tone of his choking, like he’s trying to respond with some particular kind of noise. “Found him sleeping in my cargo bay. I must’ve put him out five or six times but he always found a way back on board, so I let him join the crew.”

 “Hard to say no to a face like that,” Doc says. “Let’s go in the back and find something to calm him down.”

 “You can help?”

 “Never met a living thing I couldn’t. You have the very good fortune of dropping your ship on top of the best vet in the galaxy, Beautiful.”

 After a beat of skeptical silence, she huffs. “Well the last two laughed me out of their offices, so I don’t have much of a choice. But you aren’t going to like what happens if you’re as full of hot air as you sound.”

 “I promise my ego is very well-founded,” Doc says, grinning despite himself.

# # #

 The problem, it turns out, is actually several problems. Congenital gland failure forces Pooper to rely on his underdeveloped amphibian lungs since his skin is too dry to keep his blood oxygenated. The strain on his trachea is creating lesions and inflammation that closes the airway to his lungs, so he isn’t getting enough oxygen there either. Plus he seems to have pretty severe anxiety. And he’s fat.

 Very, very fat.

 “It’s my brother’s fault,” the woman—Rea—is explaining, draped over the metal stool on the other side of the exam table. “Rhese gives him crickets just for existing. Poops just looks up at him with those big red eyes and he folds like a wet tissue. It’s embarrassing, really.”

 Doc indulges himself in a nice, long look at her while her attention is on her extremely sedated pet. She’s a very distracting presence back here, looking the way she does in those tight pants and that thin, clingy tank top, her jacket long abandoned on the floor.

 It’s not a distraction he minds.

 “So it’s just you and your brother on your ship, then?” Doc asks, oh-so-innocently. “No one else I ought to know about? Spouses? Romantic partners?”

 Rea snorts, but there’s a smile on her lips and a spark of curiosity in those sharp blue eyes. “Very subtle,” she says.

 “Subtle isn’t really my style.”

 “Mine either.”

 “So that’s a no to the committed, monogamous relationship?”

 “I’m allergic,” she says, and Doc can feel a tiny sliver of his heart plummeting fast and hard into love.

 “We have so much in common.”

 Rea laughs, leaning her head against her hand, elbow propped against the back of the stool. She’s looking at him with a strange sort of intensity that leaves him tingling everywhere. “So talk to me about this shrine,” she says, and gestures to his tech’s station in the corner, surrounded by posters and scale models of swoop bikes. Mostly just the one swoop bike.

 “It’s my tech’s,” Doc explains. “Some swoop jockey he’s obsessed with.”

 “You not a fan?”

 “I’ve been to a few races, but I’m more of a gambler than a gearhead.”

 She nods. “Wouldn’t want to ruin those pretty hands.”

 “Need ‘em for work.” And with a wink, Doc adds, “Need ‘em for play, too.”

 Rea laughs, and he doesn’t think he’s imagining the color rising in her face as she shakes her head. “You fix my ginx, and maybe we find out if they’re as good as you say.”

 “Your skepticism is starting to hurt my feelings, Gorgeous.”

 # # #

 Pooper is happy to return to his perch in the corner of Rea’s quarters, croaking approval as he settles his considerable mass onto a wide log under a heat lamp. He’s breathing easy now, his skin slick with artificial mucus that doesn’t stop his companion from dropping a kiss to his broad forehead.

 She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and hooks a finger into the lapel of Doc’s jacket, leading him back out to the lounge. The gentle wheeze of Pooper’s snores follows them down the corridor.

 A weird pet, but Doc likes him.

 “So let’s talk payment,” Rea says, whipping out two glasses and a bottle of midtier Corellian whiskey. “You want a mixer?”

 Doc shakes his head, clinking the glass she hands him with hers before taking a generous sip. Something about the blizzard outside makes the heat of it all the more welcome in his belly.

 Rea tosses the whole thing back in one swallow.

 “Here’s the thing,” she goes on, pouring herself another two fingers. “I don’t actually have any credits. But I’m not gonna leave you with nothing, so don’t worry about that. A Corellian always pays her debts, y’know? I’m sure we can work something else out.”

 Honestly, he forgot about the money. It isn’t usually his responsibility. Doc shifts uncomfortably, swirling the liquor in his glass as he tries to think how to put this. “If you’re suggesting sex--”

 “Sex? What?” Rea shakes her head emphatically. “No way. I mean, I’d definitely like to fuck you, but not as payment. Just for fun.”

 Doc visibly sags in relief. “Oh, thank the stars. I mean, yes to the fucking for fun part. But you really don’t need to pay me. We can just call it a favor to my favorite ginx if you want.”

 “Hold onto that charity until you see what I’m offering,” Rea says, smirking. She downs the rest of her whiskey and strips out of her jacket, leaving her in that thin tank top that clings to every plane and slope of her sculpted figure. He doesn’t try to hide his captivation. “Follow me.”

 Like he could do anything else.

 He trails after her into the ship’s cargo bay, fixated on what has to be the most exquisite ass he’s ever seen. His fingers itch to dig into it, to feel the shifting of all that muscle for himself.

 She stops in front of a speeder--No, a swoop bike. A very familiar swoop bike.

 “No way,” he breathes.

 Rea leans back against the bike, looking unbearably smug as she props her hands against the chassis. “I thought you might recognize it.”

 He’s only seen it a billion times, at a billion different angles, immortalized in the revolving collection of holos and figurines covering Terek’s station. He’s seen it enough that even he can recognize the sleek lines and unique thruster configuration hovering before him. “When you said your name is Rea,” he says, still gaping a little in bewilderment, “is that short for Nirea Velaran?”

 Her smile only widens, and that’s all the confirmation he needs.

 “Whaddya think?” She says, patting the hood. “Will this hunk of junk be a fair exchange?”

 “Fair? I don’t know much about swoop racing, Gorgeous, but that bike is worth a million creds, easy.” Doc glances around the cargo bay, quickly realizing there are a dozen other bikes and a few speeders crammed into the small space. “They probably all are, just cause they’re yours.”

 She shrugs. “Well I don’t know much about biology, but I’m pretty sure Pooper would’ve died without your help. His life is worth every credit and more. So just take it, will you? Give it to your tech or something.”

 Terek might literally kill him if he refuses.

 “I don’t even fly this thing anymore, Doc. It’s just gathering dust in here.” When he still doesn’t agree, Rea adds, “The sooner you say yes, the sooner we’re done with business. And once the business is done, we can start having fun.”

 Doc laughs then, nodding. “You drive a hard bargain, Beautiful.”

 # # #

 They watch the sun rise from the cockpit, their bodies glistening like the snow in the wash of soft, golden light. Rea is collapsed against him, boneless and sighing, her head tipped back against his chest and her body still slick against his thigh. He suspects she isn’t quite as thoroughly spent as he is, but she must be satisfied enough since she isn’t asking for more.

 Doc has learned a number of things about infamous swoop jockey Nirea Velaran tonight, namely that she isn’t shy about asking for what she wants.

 It’s the most fun he’s had in ages.

 The silence is comfortable as they bask in the afterglow, hands still lightly caressing, coming down from the last of many highs. It’s the undemanding kind of quiet that grows out of people who understand each other, even if they don’t know one another that well yet.

 Finally, Rea yawns. “You want a lift home?”

 “I don’t think my neighbors will appreciate a freighter in the street,” he says, toying with the ends of her short, tousled hair.

 “I could grapple you down.”

 He would laugh, but Doc has learned enough in the last few hours to know she isn’t joking. Rea is both very athletic and exceedingly eccentric with her solutions to commonplace problems.

 “I’ll be fine. I met this fascinating woman today who traded me a swoop bike for taking care of her ginx.”

 “She sounds great,” Rea says, and he hears the smile in her tired, syrupy voice. “But I’m not letting you take a swoop out in this snow. It fucks the repulsors all to hell. You’ll end up nosediving into a drift, and then who will I call when Pooper needs help?”

 He doesn’t mention how she told him earlier they probably wouldn’t cross paths again. He just laughs, sneaks a kiss to her temple and shifts her off of his lap. “Fine,” he says. “Any idea where I left my pants?”

# # #

Doc holds tight to Rea’s waist as she lowers them onto his roof. More than one of his neighbors are standing on their stoops, staring dumbfounded at the ship and the woman dropping out of it, wrapped only in a heavy blanket and a very tired veterinarian. The snow swirls around them in a storm, shimmering like diamonds in the morning light.

 She must be freezing, but he can’t see any sign of it on her face.

 “Thanks again,” she shouts as their feet touch the heated roof, straining to be heard over the rumbling of her ship’s engine. “I really don’t know what I’d have done without your help.”

 “It was my pleasure,” he shouts back.

 “Don’t I know it!”

 Rea pulls him in for one last, searing kiss before she shoves him away, both of them laughing like idiots. Like senseless fucking teenagers who don’t know anything else. “You can get down from here, right?”

 Doc just nods, too breathless for more shouting.

 The light flashes on her grappling gun as it changes directions, lifting her slowly back toward the warmth of her waiting ship. He can see that Pooper is waiting at the top of the ramp, watching her eagerly with his big red eyes, his skin slick and shining like it’s meant to be.

 Finally, after watching just a little too long, Doc turns and lowers himself to the edge of his roof. He’s about to make the jump into the snowdrifts below when she calls out.

 “Hey Doc!”

 He pauses, craning his neck back to look at her, almost within arm’s reach of her ship now.

 “If you’re ever on Corellia,” she shout, “look me up!”

 Then, she lets loose the blanket wrapped around her body. It catches in the wind kicked up by the engines, whipping and swirling its way to getting stuck in his neighbor’s hedge. Doc hardly notices where it lands. His eyes are fixed on the tight, sculpted body of the woman he’s just realized he’s never going to forget.

 He whistles loudly in appreciation, watching the laughter he can’t hear dancing across her face. Then she’s grasping onto the lowered boarding ramp, vaulting herself to her feet in one smooth, exquisite motion.

 Rea walks backward as she disappears into her ship, blowing him a kiss and giving him a little shimmy to remember her by. He doesn’t move from the spot until she’s long gone, nothing more than a dark speck streaking through the sky.

 Doc doesn’t know when and he doesn’t know how, but he knows with every bone in his body that he has to see her again.

 And her little ginx too.

Quick shoutout to @meonlyred for the concept and genuinely horrifying title of this, and to Winter Storm Diego and my beloved, yet fucked up dog, Cooper, for inspiration.

[pomrania]

Important Matters II

((Part of the Little by Little AU. Continued from here))

((Thanks to @writebetterstarwars for the information on data storage; might seem a small thing, but it got me over a snag and let me continue writing.))

It was obvious, really. She only had one real course of action, in any situation where she felt like that, and that was to draw. Art always made her feel better.

Except when it didn't.

Sabine started blankly at the wall in front of her, a canvas waiting to be filled, but nothing came to mind. It just seemed... pointless, meaningless, when soon a full third of the crew wouldn't be able to appreciate her work.

She carefully put her supplies back where they belonged. She would never let her paint go to waste through carelessness; colours had been difficult to obtain, in those dark years at the academy, and the habit served her well. Art was there to be seen and experienced. An explosion might last for only a moment, burning through all its components, but the memory endured; paint spilled down cracks or dried in the can or thrown away was good for nothing and served no purpose.

She sat down, got up, turned around, and threw a pillow across the room in frustration. She sank back down, and let her eyes unfocus. Colours and shapes blurred together, creating new patterns and combinations. She didn't cry.

She remembered Ezra admiring her paintings, offering to be her "inspiration"; he hadn't been too pleased the first time she took him up on that, immortalizing the bunk-bed incident, but later came to see the humour in it. She remembered his compliments and giggles....

She remembered describing her art to Kanan, and how he would smile, but still look kind of sad.

"I'm sure it's beautiful." She had grown to hate those words. They meant that he couldn’t experience it. They meant that he was reacting to whatever he imagined, instead of what her own hands created.

They meant that he couldn’t see.

Sometimes she forgot; or if wasn’t entirely forgetting, then it didn’t matter to her. He could get around by himself, he could tell who was near him, he could fight, and it could seem as if everything was fine. He no longer stumbled or groped at walls, but there was still that gap between him and her paintings that couldn’t be bridged, could never be bridged.

Art was more than just colour, even if colour was what she felt most strongly. She had tried to find something that would work, something she could make that he could experience that could bridge that gap, but hadn’t succeeded. Attempting sculpture only made her fingers sore and her head hurt from frowning at the material that simply would not go where she wanted it to. She had researched, and discovered that there were entire planetary traditions of tactile art, but aside from those which required non-human anatomy to create and/or perceive, they seemed to need specialized expensive equipment to make.

She had given up, then, lethargic from grief and quiet despair (and that old voice in her head telling her that if even a Jedi could be brought so low, she didn’t stand a chance).

But that wasn’t an option any more.

So she wasn’t cut out for sculpting. Big deal. She would find something, some way of expressing what she saw in the world and what she needed to share, that could be experienced by people without full or any use of their eyes. If she had to create an entirely new branch of art, she would kriffing well do that. She was intelligent. She was creative. She was Mandalorian. She was a Rebel. She was Sabine Wren, Spectre Five, member of the Ghost crew, and she was not going to let anything stand between her and her family; not her past failures, not progressive vision loss, nothing.

Maybe she needed to start with the basics. Non-visual senses included sound, taste, touch, scent, and apparently the Force, but she couldn't do anything with that last one so she was disregarding it. She had never been that great with music. Cooking, although she enjoyed the results, wasn't something she could express herself with in any way more advanced than "it is cold, so warm food would be nice". People said that there was an art in mixing pleasant fragrances, but she didn't really believe it. That left touch, as before.

What could she get out of something just by feeling it? General shape, temperature, texture... patterns.

That reminded her. Dot writing, or the tactile alphabet as it was properly called, especially in the context she was going to use it.

She had first heard of it back at the academy, as a method in which messages might be passed. They hadn't been expected or encouraged to learn it, only be able to recognize it, and decode brief passages with the aid of a guide sheet. When the dots were raised, they could be read by touch, given sufficient practice and sensitivity; she wasn't able to do that, but it was possible. There had been maybe a brief mention that it was used as a form of written communication for blind people, but the academy didn't care about that. She had forgotten all about it, along with other things she had been forced to learn, until that suddenly became relevant to Kanan. 

She had looked it up then, found all the arrangements of dots that represented each letter, and tried to reproduce it. She didn't have any tools for that purpose, so had done her best with drops of dried glue and indentations on thin metal, solely to try and get the point across. It had been time-consuming and messy and probably not entirely accurate, but that was all she could do, to try and show the tactile alphabet to Kanan.

He hadn't expressed an interest in it. Then again, he hadn't expressed an interest in anything back then, so that in and of itself didn't say much.

There were two main parts to reading the tactile alphabet: understanding each symbol, and being able to recognize what symbol something was by feeling it. The former had been hard enough for her, when she only had to glance over at the guide sheet for the Aurebesh equivalent; she couldn't imagine how difficult it must be for somebody to have to learn both parts at the same time.

Ezra didn't have that problem though, not yet. He could learn it from looking at it, like any other code. And if he knew that, it would be easy enough to add raised portions to anything she painted, describing what it showed. It wasn't an ideal solution, or even close to one, but it would work for the moment, until she found something better.

She had a goal now, and a direction. She just needed to copy all her references on dot writing, make sure that everything was clear enough for him to read, and... get him to study and learn it, which was completely out of her power.

She slumped back. Once again, nothing she could do. No. Not nothing, never. She was only as powerless as she let herself be. She could convince him, or she would find something else. She had successfully mocked and evaded the Empire across a good chunk of the galaxy; getting one person, with whom she was already on good terms, to acquire a relatively simple skill was an attainable goal.

She still had files from when she was researching the tactile alphabet (albeit hidden deep in some folders so she wouldn't have to constantly look at them and be reminded of how she couldn't do anything). She could easily copy those to a datacard and give it to Ezra, and trust that she would be able to motivate him properly. But... would he be able to read it? Hera's datapad probably had the answer to that question, but Sabine didn't think that she would be able to read it.

She would deal with that later. Right now, it was most important to actually take action.

Maybe it would be easier for him to read something written on a sheet of flimsi. She didn't know, but it didn't matter. She could make a guide sheet of her own for him, along with the information on the datacard; and that way, there were more chances that something would work.

She loaded up the file giving all the letters of the tactile alphabet, and went to work on copying it out by hand onto flimsi. The dot arrangements seemed so arbitrary, but if she expected Ezra to memorize them, it was only right for her to try and learn it as well. She had vague memories of learning how to read as a little child, and how the shapes and lines didn't seem to mean anything, but that had eventually changed, and it was now intuitive. Anything that was physically possible could be learned, with enough practice. She believed that.

Finally, she finished making the guide sheet. She looked over it -- a bit messy, but acceptable -- and stretched her wrist. The files were loaded on the datacard. She just needed to get it all to Ezra.

She was in the middle of the doorway when it occurred to her that she had no idea of where to find Ezra. She mentally shrugged, and kept going. She would find him, eventually, some way or another.

"Eventually" ended up being not that long, as it happened. He was in that very corridor, slouched against a wall and trying to look invisible. She recognized that posture. It brought to mind happier memories, of pranks and trying to avoid the consequences thereof; jokes that were hilarious when played on Zeb (even if not so funny when she was the victim), and Zeb hunting after Ezra for retaliation.

She had never thought.... When he couldn't see, would he still be able to.... She blinked the sudden tears away, and shook her head.

It didn't seem like he'd noticed her. She wasn't sure if he could see her from there, at that angle; she didn't want to startle him, but she didn't want to insult him either. Now she could stand there all day hoping for a perfect solution to present itself, or she could do something anyways. There were no explosives involved, so it was safe to act first and think later.

She cleared her throat to announce her presence, and looked away from him. If he jerked up in surprise, if he turned his head in annoyance, or whatever he did, she didn't notice.

"Oh, hi Sabine." His voice was casual, like he hadn't just revealed -- how long ago was it now? It couldn't be more than an hour or two, at most -- something that would turn all their lives upside-down. "What is it?"

There was tension in every line of his body now. He seemed nervous, or hesitant, as if worried about how she would act. He didn't make eye contact, and for an instant she was worried herself -- was his sight worse than she thought? -- but then she realized he was just avoiding her gaze. Understandable; she was having a hard time looking at him as well.

Her body seemed to move on its own, and she stepped closer. "You need to learn this," she said in a rush, and shoved her pile at him. "Careful, there's a datacard in there. I copied the files out. For you. I wasn't sure what.... Anyways. You need to learn that," she repeated.

He reached for it automatically, and paged through it. He held one sheet close to his face, and frowned. "I've seen this before," he quietly said, more to himself than anyone else.

Really? Where? "Really?" she said. "Where?"

He flinched at that, for some reason. "On Noisi's door," he said, like the words were pulled out from him. "The med droid, that Kanan took me to. But it was raised there, the patterns. On the door."

Wasn't the droid's name "Enno-fifteen"? Not that she had ever checked the designation, but that was what Kanan used. Still, "Noisy" was a good fit, from what she remembered of the droid, from the one time she had taken Kanan to his appointment there.

If there were symbols that looked like dot writing, and it was raised, then it was probably the tactile alphabet. Maybe there would be other things she could learn from the droid, or at least ask if there were proper resources available instead of having to raise each dot individually.... "Huh," she said, to fill in the silence while her mind worked.

Ezra stepped back, and he held the sheets and datacard close to his body, like a shield. He turned partially away from her. "Is that everything?" he asked, and she realized that he was expecting unpleasant and awkward questions.

No. Not now. She would never do anything to hurt him. There was only one awkward question that needed to be asked at the moment.

"Can... can I give you a hug?"

He tensed at her voice, then relaxed once he registered what she'd said. "Yeah. Okay."

She wrapped her arms around him, tightly, like she could protect him from what was eating away at his vision by sheer force of will. He didn't melt into the embrace, like he normally did with a hug. She felt the stiffness in his arms, in his back, and probably all over. If only there was something more she could do to help!

"You know we will do anything for you," she fiercely whispered.

He gave a quiet, almost mocking, bark of laughter. "Yeah? Anyone got a spare eye I could borrow?"

She considered that. If it was a viable option, surely Ketsu would have a contact or two who could direct her to any organ --

He must have sensed the direction of her thoughts. "Wait, no, it wouldn't work," he hurriedly said. "Noisi said that. It was... something about optic nerves. Cybernetics as well. And heh, it was just a joke anyways, you know?"

She dutifully tried to laugh. It probably sounded like a mynock being strangled. "Anything else?"

"How about a blood oath not to make fun of me in any art I can't see?" From his tone of voice, he probably intended it as another joke. It was serious to her, though.

"I will," she murmured.

"Uh...."

The moment was over, and she let go of him. Nothing more she could do... No. There was something she could do.

"Make sure you read and learn that," she said again, and gestured vaguely at the stack.

"Why? What is it?"

Something to let you read when your eyes give out. "It's a thing. A thing you need to know."

He gave her that familiar "seriously, Sabine" look. It wasn't all about where his gaze was pointed, but also his eyebrows, so he would probably be able to make that expression without being able to see her. "That doesn't say very much."

She shook her head. "Something I was taught a while ago. A type of code. Or cipher, I was never very clear on the difference between the two. Just... check it out."

"Why?" he said.

She couldn't tell him. She could barely even think it for any length of time; there was no way she could say it. Suddenly she couldn't stand to look at him. She mumbled something indistinct and fled.

Once safely away from him, she wrapped her arms around herself. She had done what she could. Now she... what? What did she do now? She could go back to her quarters... alone, with her clamouring thoughts for company. She would rather not. But she knew where Ezra was, which meant he wouldn't be in the room he shared with Zeb. Maybe Zeb would be in, and she could talk with him.

She hesitated at the door to their room, then knocked. "It's Sabine." She didn't know if anybody was there, but just in case.

"Come in," Zeb called.

He was sitting on his bunk, the datapad from Hera in front of him. He looked normal, until she noted how defined the muscles on his neck were; he was clenching his jaw, and probably tensed all over.

"Get any reading done?" she lightly asked.

He glanced up at her. "I've memorized the table of contents, if that counts. Did you know that she appended an entire text on anatomy of the human visual system? At least, it's listed there, I haven't gotten far enough to actually check for myself."

She sank down beside him. "I wasn't able to even open it again," she said. "I just...." She let her gaze wander. "I tried to draw something, but it wasn't working." How many of the posters on the wall were important to Ezra? "I gave him the files I had on the tactile alphabet, and told him to learn it, but I couldn't tell him why."

He gave a soft grunt. "I don't think I recognize the name. What is it?"

"It's raised dots." That was easy enough to say. "The arrangement of the dots determines what letter it is, and it's easier to learn them by looking, so I just drew them and wrote the Aurebesh next to it."

"That sounds... interesting, maybe?"

She leaned into him. Zeb did have a noticeable scent from up close, but it wasn't unpleasant, and it was a reminder for one more sense that she wasn't alone. She wasn't dealing with this alone. "It's a form of writing for -- for -- a way to read without having to look. I thought that if he learned it, I could use that to put a description of my artwork so he'd be able to know what...." She sighed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time. It just sounds stupid now when I say it like that."

"At least you got something done."

"What about you?" she asked. "You can't have been only staring at that one screen this whole time."

"I was... remembering something."

She waited, to see if it was something he wanted to talk about.

"Now, I've never shared this with anyone before." He drew a slow breath, and turned his head away from her. "Do you remember Chava?" he asked.

The name sounded familiar. "Isn't she the old Lasat woman we brought to Lira San?"

"Yeah, that's her." Zeb picked at his nails. "Back on Lira San, when we were getting ready to go down to the planet... she pointed at Ezra, and told me that he wouldn't see his 25th birthday. I asked her what she meant, of course, but she said that she only passed on what was given to her by the Ashla. I tried not to think too much about it; we're in a war, after all, and there's no guarantee that any of us will survive the next week, much less the better part of a decade. Then, once we landed, there were better things to dwell on, and I pushed it to the back of my mind, but I couldn't completely forget it.

"In a way, and it sounds terrible to say it, but I'm glad he's going to be blind within a few years. It means that he won't see his 25th birthday. There's a way for me to trust a spiritual leader of my people, without believing that he'll necessarily die young."

She was silent for a moment. "You're right," she said. "That does sound terrible."

He flashed a grin in response, but it quickly faded. "I don't want it to happen," he quietly said. "I don't want my family to suffer. But I'll take anything, if the alternative is losing them."

"I remember when Kanan...." She rubbed her eyes. "It was wrong, and it shouldn't have happened, and then he was here but so far away from us for so long, and I don't know if I can go through that with Ezra too and come out the end."

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "It's a different situation, and they're different people. Kanan suffered a lot that Ezra won't; Ezra will be going through things that Kanan didn't. The only thing guaranteed the same...."

"...is that neither of them will be able to see anything," she finished. "How did this happen? We end up with the last two Jedi in the galaxy, and both of them have vision problems?"

She felt him shrug. There was no real answer to be given. "At least, with Kanan as he is, there's someone who can help Ezra with... everything he'll have to learn."

Everything he'll have to learn, which would be everything. She imagined it. She didn't have a choice in the matter; the mental images battered down the metaphorical doors and flooded her mind, flooded her eyes with tears again.

When she became aware of anything more than those thoughts circling around in her head, Zeb was holding her. When she could see clearly again, without the liquid distortion, she noticed that his eyes were dry, with not even a slight indication of muss in the fur underneath.

"You haven't been crying," she said, almost accusingly. If anything, the accusation would be directed at herself.

"I can't cry," he simply said.

That didn't make sense. "Wait, I know for a fact that --"

He cut her off. "It's nothing to do with my body. My eyes tear up from onions and irritants, and I can laugh so hard I cry, but I learned how not to cry a long time ago. I was forced to get so used to it, that now I can't cry when I'm upset even if I wanted to."

She wasn't the only one hurting, even if the others weren't as obvious about it. She remembered Hera breaking off mid-sentence, and Kanan reaching for Hera's hand, and Chopper's subdued behaviour... not to mention every single thing Ezra did. She hugged Zeb back. He needed it every bit as much as she did.

"What do we do now?" she whispered.

"We survive, and keep moving onwards. It's all we've ever done, and all we can ever do."

"How?"

He shifted, and unwrapped his arms from around her. "Maybe we can start by looking at what Hera made for us. She said there were answers in it to questions she thought we'd have, and once we know what we're dealing with -- what Ezra's dealing with -- we can better figure out what to do."

"What we're all dealing with," she corrected. If it hurt one person, it hurt all of them. They were a family. "Maybe... maybe if I'm going over it with you, I'll actually be able to read it this time."

"And I'll be able to get past the table of contents?" He reached across her and grabbed the datapad. His hand shook; not much, but enough that she saw the datapad wobble. Sabine steadied it with her own hand.

"We can...skip the intro page," she suggested.

"Not much we need to know on there anyways," he agreed.

They loaded up the next page. She squeezed his shoulder, and began to read.