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Jael doesn’t seem to be enjoying the blaster training very much.
That isn’t to say she isn’t good -- she’s one of Sabine’s better students, truth be told, but she walks away from every class looking distraught, or like she might start to cry.
“Hoffman,” she says, at the end of the last class of the week, “You stay. I want to talk to you.”
Jael pulls away from the gaggle of other students, staying as far away from both Sabine and the gun rack as she can. Someone claps her on the shoulder and laughs, and then, very quickly, she is alone.
Sabine crosses her arms and leans back against the empty munitions crate that doubles as her “desk”.
“Yes, ma’am?” she asks, plainly nervous, gripping the strap of her messenger bag hard.
“Please,” Sabine says, “Call me Sabine.”
“Uh, okay, Miss Sabine,” she says. “What did you call me back for?”
Sabine studies her for a minute. She’s average height, for a born and raised Lothali citizen, with the deep-space eyes and raven-dark hair and skin just a shade off from Sabine’s own that belong to her and nearly every other human on the planet.
Her hair is long and loose, like many young girls’ and unmarried women’s, though during lessons it’s tied back and out of her face. When the light catches it just right, it gleams like a dark rainbow, pink and green and blue shimmering to life.
“Do you want to be here?” she asks, because she does not have time to teach people that do not want to be taught.
“Of course!” Jael says, and the look on her face is complicated, enough so that Sabine can’t read it, because she grew up Mandalorian and Mandalorians have different tells than people who don’t wear armor for skin.
“I think you think you want to be here,” Sabine says, and she’s almost agreeing with Jael, but not really. It’s just a guess, but it feels right.
“Please don’t kick me out,” Jael says.
“Everybody has a right to self defense,” Sabine tells her. “The only way you get out of this is if you leave yourself.”
“What if… what if I don’t want to hurt anybody?” Jael asks. “What then?”
Jael Hoffman isn’t the youngest in the class, or if she is, it isn’t by very much, but unlike the others her age, she came alone, at least at first. It is a reminder, to Sabine, that for aruetiise , she is still a child, and aruetii children do not pick up blasters unless something awful has happened to them.
Something like the Empire.
“I would ask why,” Sabine says, because this is a war, and most people don’t want to hurt other people, but they aren’t being given much of a choice, either.
“I just…” Jael shrugs. “Um. I had. A brother. Have, I guess.”
Sabine waits.
“He’s older than me, by, um, ten years, but five years ago, he, uh, became a Stormtrooper?” Jael shrugs. “He and our parents had a huge falling out. He kept saying all this stuff about how, like, joining the Empire was the only way to help Lothal.” Jael shrugs again. “I dunno. I was only little at the time.”
Sabine casts an eye at the targets they use for practice -- more or less life-size cutouts painted like Stormtroopers.
“So, um. I guess every time I think about, uh, shooting a Stormtrooper…”
“You think about shooting your brother?” Sabine finishes.
Jael nods.
“And then you maybe think about how most Stormtroopers are just normal people, and how they probably don’t deserve to die, just because the Empire managed to do its job for once and brainwash them?” Sabine continues, bitterness coating her voice.
Jael bites her lip, and then nods again. “I guess,” she whispers.
Sabine hikes herself higher up on the munitions crate, sitting cross-legged. She pulls out one of her twin blasters and a cleaning rag, and starts methodically disassembling it and wiping it down.
“I’m going to tell you a secret, okay?” she says.
“Anybody can become a Stormtrooper, but the good ones? The ones that are good people, they leave .”
Jael furrows her brows. “Why is that a secret?”
“That’s not the secret,” Sabine says. “This is: When I was thirteen years old, I joined the Imperial Academy. I know the good Stormtroopers desert, because that’s what I did.”
“Oh.” Jael says. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Why not?”
“Because the ones that are left are still people.”
Sabine raises a brow, but doesn’t look up from cleaning her blaster.
Every time she shoots a Stormtrooper, every time she kills an Imperial agent, she thinks, that could have been me . Every time, she reminds herself, but it’s not. I left , because that is the truth. She left. She joined the Empire, which was a choice, and then she left it, which was also a choice, and if she could choose then so could anybody else.
“I know that, um, they’re probably not good people,” Jael stammers, “But I have a hard time thinking that they deserve to, uh, die, I guess? I, I mean, neither do we, neither does anyone , except maybe, like, the Emperor , so maybe that makes it even, but I don’t think so? Like, I get that this is, like, war , so we don’t really get a choice about it either way, and I’m not, like, saying that anyone that’s ever killed a Stormtrooper is a bad person for it, like maybe they’re a bad person but for something else , not killing a Stormtrooper, I just don’t like I’d like to do it?”
Sabine’s mouth twitches a little. “Seems like you talked yourself into a solution,” she says.
Jael is surprised, she can tell. “I did?” she asks.
“Sure,” Sabine says, “There’s more than one way to help the Rebellion, after all. The first thing I ever did for them was slicing,” which had been more for herself than the Rebellion, because she’d been unaffiliated at the time, but it had still helped , “And Fulcrum got her start running relief missions.”
Jael is quiet for a little bit, probably thinking about this new information. “I still think I’d like to know how to use a blaster without hurting myself,” she says, “But, do you know anybody that could show me how to help people, when they get hurt?”
“Like a medic?” Sabine says, a little surprised.
“I guess?” Jael says, sounding more like a question. “I mean, if that’s, um, too hard, then I could just stay here, it’s fine, but-”
“Kid,” Sabine tells her, “We always need more medics. Do you already know first aid?”
Jael beams at her. “A little,” she says, “For both humans and ithorians.” That makes sense -- Lothal’s natural beauty had attracted a relatively large amount of the Ithorian diaspora.
“That’s a great start,” Sabine assures her. “I’ll ask around, see if anybody knows anybody, yeah?”
Jael’s grin splits even wider. “Thank you so much, Miss Sabine!”
She starts to run off to where the students’ speeders are usually parked, and then stops. “Oh no,” she says.
Sabine hides a smile. “Did you come here with friends?” she asks, observing the nearly empty stretch of flattened grass
“My neighbor, actually,” Jael despairs.
“Come on, I’ll give you a lift,” Sabine assures her.