Midnight Moon ☽ Sabine Wren [Star Wars Rebels]

iii.

Chapter Three;

Soleil almost wished that the Ghost would never touch down – even if it meant that she would never get to live her dream, that she was letting it slip through her fingers like smoke. But the news that they would be at a refugee camp?

She shook her head, closing her eyes. No. It couldn't be true. It went against everything she'd ever been told. It was the Rebels who caused death and destruction and forced innocents into camps, fearful for their life. She had been told, over and over again: the Rebels were insurgents, a threat to the order of the galaxy. It was the Empire who brought stability.

She was going to have to see the truth with her own eyes.

Soleil stood wedged between Sabine and Ezra, tugging on her hair for something to do. The crates they would use to distribute food was nearby.

Ezra jumped down from his previous seat on one of the said crates. "You okay?" he asked Soleil.

The brunette jolted. "Oh, yeah," she said. "Just a little... nervous, I guess."

Both to be confronted with the truth, and to finally live her dream.

She felt the Ghost land and bit her lip. 

Okay. Here we go.

The door opened, and Soleil gasped, her eyes flooded with light.

It was beautiful – a temperate terrain, green with an azure sky ahead. Soleil wanted to run outside and feel the long blades of grass and touch the trees, a breed that was unheard of Garel. Everything here was wilder, more natural – there wasn't a building in sight.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Hera asked, descending from the cockpit.

Soleil could only nod, but Hera and Kanan understood at once.

Soleil was allowed to stare for a moment longer before everyone chivvied to action, pushing the crates with them. 

Soleil trailed behind the others: for one, they knew where they were going, and she didn't. And two: she just wanted to drink in the sights of a new world, barely daring to believe she was breathing another planet's air, walking on a ground that wasn't dust and concrete. She was enthralled. 

And she was so busy taking in sights that she didn't realise they'd arrived before everyone else came to a stop.

"What is this place?" she choked out. Her heart had stopped, her eyes were wide, her breaths blocked in her throat.

The sight in front of her was the most miserable sight she's seen in her life.

The town before her was – could they even call it a town? It was a camp, more like, building contrasted of scrap metal and torn fabric. People who meandered about did so slowly, arms wrapped around each other, shoulders stooped and bent over double.

Hera rested a hand on Soleil's shoulder. "I told you it was bad," she said lowly.

It was bad. And it was worse. As they drew closer and opened the crates, soon walking amongst people more thin and miserable and withdrawn than anyone Soleil had ever seen, with dirty and frayed clothing, who thanked them endlessly as they handed out the food. Soleil suddenly felt tainted: she was Imperial. She was different to everyone here, she was part of the Empire, which caused this.

The ground had been pulled out from beneath her feet, the ground she had known and walked on her entire life – it was gone, and it left her falling, confused, with nothing to reach out and hold onto because she hadn't been walking on substantial ground: she had been walking on a fragile web of lies. With every grateful murmur of thanks, Soleil wanted to turn around and be sick on the ground.