#seatos

Breathing in and out, Sabine listened, laying still, eyes closed. With the exception of a dull, roaring white noise (the sea?, she wondered), it was quiet. The absence of any other activity - of living beings or droids or ships or weapons - gave her the impression that she was alone. She waited a few more breaths, just in case, but nothing changed. Not wanting to waste an opportunity to move if she could, Sabine gently wiggled her fingers and toes, awakening the rest of her body.

Nothing broken, she noted. Some soreness.

But the claxons that went off inside her head when she tried to move helped her remember how she'd ended up on the ground.

Sabine groaned, her defeat rushing back to her with a burning clarity.

Seatos.

Baylan Skoll.

He'd toyed with her - accessed her memories, played on her emotions - attempting to strike up some kind of a deal. An alliance, he'd said. When he’d offered her her life - and the certainty of a reunion with Ezra - in exchange for the map and her cooperation, it had been...tempting.

So tempting. With a twinge of guilt, Sabine remembered just how tempting it had been. How close she had come. But ultimately, she’d refused, igniting the emerald lightsaber - the only weapon capable of destroying an object borne of Dark Magick - to prevent either of them from reaching the promised destination.

But before she could strike the map, it was gone.

Her utter astonishment in the moment altered time, making it feel like forever and all at once when the golden sphere, her last, best hope of finding Ezra in one sense and of preserving his sacrifice in another, landed with a smack in the palm of her enemy’s hand.

What followed was the short burst of a battle she never could have won, not against two Force users (not on her own, not without Ahsoka), and it baffled her still why they’d left her alive just to witness the culmination of their plans.

Skoll's ominous words were the last thing she remembered before everything went dark, before both she and the map were discarded on the cliffs of Seatos, no longer of use to anyone.

No one will be following us.

She had failed.

To save Ezra...

...and everyone else.

Sabine wept.