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A past member of the Lasat Honor Guard was no stranger to adornment. Their uniforms had been studded with jewels, rank indicated by earrings, bracelets and armbands basically armor in themselves. Switching to sleeker, simpler armor had cut Zeb’s time preparing missions in half. That was one thing Zeb wouldn’t go back to if he were offered the opportunity.
But there were times Zeb had got distracted by a beautiful pattern on an an otherwise plain human’s face (they didn’t have stripes like other species; Zeb had stood out even among other Lasats for his beautifully violet stripes), then realized it’d been carefully painted on with hands much smaller and softer that his, and he’d wondered how it’d felt to look that calculated, precise, artistically beautiful. But not only was it human, it was usually human females.
“Why do human girls paint on their faces?” Zeb had asked, earning an eyeroll from Sabine.
“For looks, I know,” he added. “Why just the females?”
“Kriff if I know,” Sabine said. “Ask Kanan and Ezra why they leave their ugly mugs plain.”
That answer wasn’t the level of helpfulness he’d been hoping for.
Sabine always was the brightest and showiest in a room, maybe to stick it to the Empire. Or maybe she’d just dressed boringly for too long and was tired of it. Maybe she painted her hair and face to wash the Imperial Academy off her skin. Zeb would always give off that energy whether he wanted to or not, which was why he felt safer in a crowd of different species and varying heights. But this tiny recurring desire, what made him glance at others’ face paint a little too long and with a little too much uncomfortable jealousy, wanted to just be prettily adorned. for his (gorgeous) eyes to stand out from his face rather than his presence stand out from the other beings in the room.
Hera’s fighter made it to the ground safely, but her comms were impaired and Zeb had to gesture to lead her to their last open landing strip. Zeb helped Hera out of the cabin while Kallus took notes of the damages on a clear data pad.
“That’s the third time your starboard wing has malfunctioned this past five rotations.”
“Thanks for telling me. Absolutely indispensable wisdom,” Hera leaned against Zeb for support. Thank the force she still had her snark; he was afraid it had exploded in the dogfights she kept getting into.
“I was going to suggest you retire this ship—“
“I have. Three times. Who’s in charge of overseeing repair workers? Someone I know.”
“Just take a different ship! We will work on this one long-term. I will personally see to it.”
“Personally? Now I’m even more scared.”
Kallus glared at Hera. “Do it yourself, then! I just don’t think you endangering yourself does us any good.”
“Thanks,” Hera said. “…I’ll take my chances with this girl again. Just have her ready by tomorrow.”
“As you wish.”
Hera stood up straight, Zeb took a step after her, but she waved a lek at him dismissively. “I’m just going to the main pyramid. Kallus probably needs your help transporting this ship.”
“But—“
“Actually, that would be beneficial,” Kallus shut off his datapad and looked up. “I take it you’re usually the manual laborer on these missions.”
“What gave it away? My delicate physique? Yeah, I get stuck hauling boxes because Jedi are lazier than they want you to think.”
“Don’t they have more important things to do?”
“Like what? Meditation? What they teach you in the Empire, I’ll never understand.” Zeb started to push the ship in the direction of one of the hangars, glad the (floaty technology) was still operational. In his experience, that was one of the first things to get damaged in a blast.
“Rebel ships. Hyperspace routes. How to act and look the same. Jedi stuff and individuality are more Sith things.”
That was the thing the Empire hated most, that different planets had different values and rules and that the creatures on them acted differently and didn’t fight on the Empire’s terms and didn’t look the same. It wasn’t like Zeb had a choice to fit in ever since the siege of Lasan, but he’d always wanted to go to Lira San and be exactly like the people around him.
“A little to the right. We don’t want to scrape the hangar walls.”
Spending time with rebels and other allies made him want to push other differences, to anger the Empire even more, to feel less like a member of the honor guard and more like a rebel who got along with other rebels despite being his own person.
Kallus turned around to talk to Sabine, describing the damages.
Absent-mindedly, Zeb ran a claw through the soot left on the ship’s exterior by a weak laser blast, and traced it along his upper eyelid like he’d seen humans and humanoids do, the charcoal sticking to the velvety fuzz around his eyes.
“Hey, it’s just like 20BBY Mandalore nightclub aesthetic,” Sabine gestured to him and he self-consciously pulled his hand away from his face. “All my retro friends were trying to do that, with their 500-credit eyeliner. Kallus, Hera’s really nervous about going on patrol at 0600 tomorrow, just extend this ship’s repair deadline by a day and I’ll go talk some sense into her.” She strode out of the hangar into the late-day sunlight.
Kallus blinked at his datapad, distracted, then glanced up at Zeb again. “I was one of those ‘retro friends’, except for me it was actually 20BBY. Kids these days.”
Zeb rubbed the charcoal off, careful not to stab himself as usual. “Forget about it. Hera’s going to kill me for any remote association with someone who might try and repair her ship past when she desperately needs it to lead her patrol.” He turned to go. “Just get me when this situation gets worse.”
“I hope you meant ‘if’, but I’m not going to ask.” Kallus typed what must have been model numbers for parts into the datapad, back on task again. Hopefully he kept that up because Zeb hadn’t been joking about death-by-sleepy-Hera.
Zeb walked up the next pyramid to the room where he was temporarily living, thankfully next to Kanan, Ezra, Sabine, and Hera, because although not having to share a room with Ezra made rooms feel ten times bigger and less cluttered with random holocrons and other Jedi nonsense, he didn’t know what he’d do if an Inquisitor crashed through the roof and stabbed him in his deep sleep, as they tend to do. Or whatever Inquisitors are for, honestly, as long as they care about Jedi nonsense, they’re a Jedi problem.
He tried to practice bo-rifle defense combinations, but he couldn’t get through any respectable amount without getting distracted and messing up. It was like his mind was full of mirrors and he kept mentally staring at himself, and imaginary him looked great as usual but there was something in the charcoal smudges that he hadn’t bothered to completely remove that teased him with unfulfiled potential.
He stopped practicing and hopped to the next room where there was a real mirror. Yes, in a stone pyramid, Jedi nonsense, don’t question it. He ran through the– what had Sabine called it? eyeliner– options that he’d seen on various humanoids. He only remembered a few; a particularly striking cyan that swished up from a dark-skinned human girl’s eye, a black ring around a pale green twilek woman’s eyes. Wait, he could remember one more. A human woman who’d stood out to him in a crowd of peasants because of rich golden paint on her lips and eyes and eyebrows. And one more, what bottomless pit, what keepsake box in his memory had held these so perfectly for so long? A lavender Thelin with the spotty patterns near her eyes accentuated by light and dark strokes of paint…
A buzz from his communicator (set to silent mode) startled him, and he answered it.
“Spectre-4 reporting.”
“Garazeb? This is Kallus. Hera’s ship isn’t starting.”
“Shouldn’t you get Hera for that? And why are you starting it anyways?”
“If we get past this minor obstacle, there’s a… 28 percent chance the internal computer is working flawlessly, and a 60 percent chance I’ll have to extend its estimated repair time.”
“What’s the other 12 percent?”
“We don’t mention that. On a similar note, Sabine suggested that contacting Hera would be worse than that 12 percent chance outcome.”
“...Valid. I’ll be there as soon as possible. Spectre-4 out.”
“You don’t need to do th–” Zeb closed the comms, glanced at himself again, and ran out the door.
When he made it to the hangars, Kallus was waiting for him outside. Sabine was walking away, towards another part of the base.
“Good luck!” she told Zeb cheerfully.
“Blast you,” Zeb punched her as she walked past.
“It’s you who’s gonna get blasted,” she said. “Too bad Kallus wanted you down here. He could’ve taken all the fall for this and Hera would’ve never known…”
Zeb rolled his eyes and walked up to Kallus. “What’s all this about?”
“Just help me start the ship,” Kallus sighed. “Also ignore whatever Sabine’s saying.”
“You don’t know how strictly I live by that last statement,” Zeb assured him.
Zeb pressed a few buttons he’d seen Hera go through when they’d been in similar small ships, using his knowledge of the few times he’d piloted the Phantoms, and the ship’s data center lit up and engines glowed with heat.
“Forget what I said about us being even,” Kallus said. “I owe you.”
“Without me you would have got an untimely death. You owe me a lot more than you think, mate.”
“Lovely.”
“I’ll stop bothering you soon,” Zeb said, and he cringed at his usual confidence faltering. “I… I mean…”
Kallus smiled briefly, then held up the datapad. “I’m free until next cycle starts.” Zeb expected him to turn back to it and keep organizing and giving out orders anyways, but he shut it off and Zeb felt like his fate was sealed. Kallus had been a real friend these past few days, or at least a solid acquaintance, not like Sabine or Ezra but someone he’d actually felt respected by, and he felt a “forget about it, bye” wasn’t going to work on him.
“You, uh. You said something about the face paint humans are always wearing.” In fact, he’d remembered the earlier conversation perfectly, and Zeb didn’t like the thought of how well he remembered things he was interested in. He put a hand behind his head awkwardly. “Do you…” he hated how that didn’t apply to remembering how to speak when he was nervous, and oh my force karabast why was he nervous “have any?”
“Not until the next supply run. And I doubt that sort of thing qualifies as essential.”
“Right, right.”
Zeb quickly changed the subject, but he couldn’t get it out of his head how Kallus had reacted. Or rather, not reacted – he hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow. It gave Zeb a little confidence that maybe more humans were like this despite how gendered they usually acted.
Rolling out of bed still in his under-armor suit (it had been a late night, no, not exciting, he’d just stayed up way too late bugging Kallus for more horror stories about having Thrawn as a boss) Zeb walked up to one of the windows in a makeshift storage room in the pyramid the Spectres resided in to watch as the earliest workers, commanders, and other jobs started work around the base. The Spectres weren’t in constant demand, and he noticed they often got up around the other pilots. He did miss when Ezra would wake him up at 05:00 slamming doors, and then he’d throw Ezra into the brig and take all of the waffles Sabine made before Ezra could slither his way out. Many things had changed; they had stone rooms instead of bunks on the Ghost, flour supplies were low, and Ezra got up before the sun to go train with Kanan. But they were still his closest friends.
So obviously Sabine threw something at the back of his head.
“H– come back here!” He charged at her, and after a brief fistfight he picked up whatever she’d thrown, a small pointy stick, and made to stab her with it.
“If you stab me, that breaks,” Sabine said.
“Never underestimate small pointy stick against pathetic Mandalorian armor!”
“Never underestimate the power of dodging,” Sabine said, stepping away. “Also, that’s eyeliner, not a weapon.”
“Anything I wield is a weapon,” Zeb said. “Wait, what? Really?”
“Don’t think I don’t pay attention to the stuff you say or something. Don’t worry about returning it, you’ll probably break it with those big ol paws anyways. I’m gonna catch Ezra before he runs after an adorable squishy mucus salamander again, wanna come?”
“Uh. Gimme a few minutes."
“Already gone,” Sabine took off down the hallway in a streak of purple and yellow.
Zeb always wanted to harass Ezra, but there were new priorities at the moment. And everyone was out of the pyramid anyways.
At the mirror in his room, Zeb nervously drew and redrew the simple black lines that tapered off at the outer corners of his eyes, switching which hand he was using and trying to keep his hands steady. But he wasn’t used to such fine motor control, and his clumsy fingers failed him one too many times. Frustrated, he made a fist which snapped the pencil.
Slightly calmer now, he wondered if he could bother Kallus one more time, or if earlier’s conversation was pushing it. Not wanting to seem weird or annoying in front of an equal colleague was a new feeling, and one he did not want to explore. But the stupid nagging feeling wouldn’t leave him alone, and he slipped half the pencil into a pocket on his belt.
Kallus was standing in the hangar, facing another ship, his back to Zeb. From what Zeb knew of the daily life of Imperials, they were always standing around looking at stuff with their hands clasped behind their backs, and since Kallus had had so much practice with this Zeb was sure that without the datapad he’d be evilly clasping his hands. With this thought Zeb was still a few meters away.
“Zeb,” Kallus said, still facing away.
“How’d you know it was me?” Zeb asked, raising an eyebrow ridge even if he knew Kallus couldn’t see him. “You got trackers on all of us or something?”
“Well, now I know it’s you, and good idea, by the way. That Jedi kid likes loth-cats so much, we can give him a microchip.”
“I think Hera might actually agree to that. Kanan would, if the Force couldn’t do that already.”
“It can?”
“Never mind. I…” He started to trail off, but Kallus was watching him now, and it was too late to second-guess. He pulled Kallus aside, out of the way, nearer a support beam close to the wall. “Care to lend a small, human hand to secure my position as most beautiful rebel?” he pressed the eyeliner into Kallus’s (small human) hand.
Kallus’s eyes widened, then slightly narrowed in a teasing smile. “You wouldn’t rather an actual artist?”
“I’d trust an ex-imperial not to stab me before I’d trust Sabine.” He paused. “Actually, maybe only you, if Thrawn or Pryce turned I wouldn’t trust them around a loth-rat.”
“You flatter me,” Kallus said, but looked like he was holding back a grin.
“Ah, just get on with it,” Zeb resisted the urge to fold his arms defensively.
Kallus leaned in close and, resting an arm on Zeb’s chestplate, brushed the pencil around his eyes. A few careful, skillfully restrained hand movements; he squinted as he focused and even if only for a few seconds they were this close, Zeb could see his eyes dart around, following his hand.
Kallus stepped back, looking pleased. Ignoring the part of him that kind of liked being examined so closely, Zeb immediately wanted to look at himself in a mirror. But his room was a few minutes away and there was a higher priority at the moment.
“You want to match?” zeb gestured to his eyes.
“Of course,” Kallus said. “If someone wants to judge you they’ll have to get by me.”. He seemed to look around for a mirror, but there wasn’t any, and Zeb wasn’t going to suggest anything obvious like the shiny plating on a fighter. He gestured for the pencil, took it, and scraped a claw along it.
Kallus’s eyes widened, making Zeb second-guess himself yet again, but that ended when Kallus stepped closer and folded his hands calmly, looking up expectantly. Before he could regret anything, Zeb cupped a hand around Kallus’s face, completely unnecessary, although Kallus seemed to lean into it like a loth-cat being pet, and closed his eyes, allowing Zeb to swipe a claw along the outside of his eyelid. Zeb couldn’t let himself make one mistake, or he’d injure his friend. Half a second felt more excruciating than an hour of bo-rifle training. He let his instincts take over.
Zeb awkwardly pulled his hand away.
“I trust you did a good job, but I must see for myself,” Kallus said, not apologetically like he was second-guessing Zeb, but truly interested.
“Come up to my room?” Zeb suggested.
“I thought you would never offer.”
What’s that supposed to mean?
On their way up Zeb got a few looks, none too close, as most workers on Yavin-4 were stressing about engine mechanics and maintenance checks and getting yelled at by Hera. It wasn’t like those weren’t Zeb’s problems too, but he wasn’t going to worry right now.
Kallus looked in the mirror almost admiringly, then turned to Zeb and his expression didn’t falter.
Zeb told himself he didn’t need reassurance from anyone; he didn’t consider himself insecure. But the few seconds of eye contact just then was enough to soothe his anxiety in a way he hadn’t realized could happen before, like putting down a box you’d been carrying your whole life.
Maybe this would be a regular thing.