Curate, connect, and discover
For the ask game, "arranged marriage+secret identity+eloping aka basically eloping with someone you're already engaged to, but you didn't *know* you were engaged to them. Back home their parents are facepalming in exasperation because *both* of them just eloped with *each other*" AU with, of course, Sabine and Ezra. Please
I was a little stumped on this at first, but then I got INSPIRATION and speedwrote half of this in one night! And then I procrastinated for six months before writing the other half also in one night! 😅
btw, this is set in my Jedi Get Hitched AU (here's links to part one and part two for reference), which was not originally a sabezra au... but when it comes to me, if I am given the opportunity, anything can be a sabezra au (and a very long one, apparently... oops...)
--
Ursa Wren would like to state, for the record, that it was incredibly difficult to arrange a marriage alliance with the Jedi Order, and people really ought to start giving her a little more credit for pulling it off.
She wouldn't have considered it at all, except that clan tensions were rising (again), and as there had already been one recent Jedi-Mandalorian intermarriage, Ursa concluded that it really would be handy to have a lot of space warrior monks with laser swords as one's in-laws, should things come to war.
So, she got to work on it.
First, there was that message to the Jedi Council—and their reply, which explained that the Council's role in a Jedi marriage was really more of a permission thing than an arrangement thing and that the Jedi did not actually set up marriages with politicians and planetary rulers, it was just that they had an unfortunate habit of falling in love with them, so they wouldn't be arranging any betrothals or anything of the sort, but that if some day in the future, either of Ursa's children should form a mutual affection with one of the Jedi Order, they could certainly consider it.
Then Ursa had to go about trying to ensure that one of her children did form a "mutual affection" with a Jedi, which she started by bringing her family to Coruscant for a vacation and finding an excuse to tour the Jedi Temple. Tristan, she dismissed after just one afternoon visiting the Jedi Archives to explore their section on Mandalore—he went out of his way to be antagonistic to the Jedi, and the visit ended with a sweet-faced, doe-eyed twelve-year-old girl slam-tackling him to the ground in a blind fury. There was clearly no future alliances to be made regarding him.
But Sabine, Ursa considered. After all, she was more inclined to get along with the Jedi in general. And that Padawan that gave them a tour did seem a little smitten...
Perhaps it was coincidence and perhaps it wasn't—perhaps, indeed, someone on the Jedi Council had a sense of humor about things—because when a Jedi was requested to attend a peace conference on Krownest, who should show up but this same Padawan and his Jedi Master?
The Jedi Master made eye contact with Ursa , and shot her a wink with a nod towards his Padawan, who was gaping goggle-eyed at Sabine.
Oh, yeah, she thought, giving him a subtle nod of acknowledgement and the hint of a smirk. They know.
The conference lasted a few days, and Ursa instructed Sabine to take an interest in the boy. He's our guest, she'd said, and the rest of Clan Wren certainly isn't going to make him feel welcome. Do me a favor and take pity on the boy, would you? Make him feel like there's at least one person in the fortress who wouldn't wring his neck if they got the chance.
Sabine had rolled her eyes and saluted sarcastically, because she was fourteen and sarcasm was her language, but Ursa observed that she did her best to help the Padawan. By the last day, she and the boy were even passing notes to each other.
When the conference was over, Ursa slid into the shadows with the stealth of a well-trained Nite Owl, and watched the two. The boy broke away from his Master and slipped up to Sabine, darting through the crowd. He was only by her for a second—just long enough to stuff a scrap of flimsi into her hand and blurt out, "Call me!" and add on a "Please!" as he tripped backwards into the bustle of people, heading back to his Master.
Ursa saw Sabine eye the paper with a look of incredulous amusement, and her heart sunk. That flimsi was headed straight into the wastebasket, no doubt of it. So, Ursa acted quickly.
"I hope you're not going to keep that," she said dryly, stepping up to look over Sabine's shoulder. Her daughter jumped, crumpling the flimsi in her hand as if she could hide it. Ursa just arched an unimpressed eyebrow at her. "Take my advice, and don't bother being friends with a Jedi."
As Sabine's choice of friends was something Ursa nagged her about often, Ursa thought the idea was particularly genius. There was no way Sabine was getting rid of that number now—if only out of sheer spite.
It turned out, that was all Ursa ever needed to do. Sabine and the boy did the rest.
By the time she was sixteen, Sabine had casually brought up going to Coruscant "to see the Mandalore collection in the Jedi Archives" again at least four times, and when Ursa and Alrich did arrange the trip, the blue-eyed boy just so happened to be the one giving them the tour again. Ursa did not miss the way he and Sabine seemed to isolate themselves, standing side-by-side with their heads together for brief moments of whispered talk, interspersed with giggles.
When she was eighteen, Sabine actually insisted on going to Coruscant once again, this time specifically to see the boy. Apparently, that cockroach of a Sith had managed to escape his holding cell in the Jedi Temple, and on his way out, he badly injured the boy's Master. Sabine said—with no room for disagreement—that Ezra needs all the friends he can get right now, Mother.
(Ursa pretended to be very inconvenienced by it all, and announced that Sabine would have to go on her own.)
(Sabine clearly didn't mind.)
When she was twenty, Sabine brought up the idea of her attending an art school on Coruscant. Ursa allowed it.
When she came home, at twenty-two, there was a look in her eyes that spoke volumes—a look that said that home wasn't quite home anymore, that it was missing something, that it was missing someone.
There was something else different about her, as well. She wore a blue, crystalline jewel on a leather cord around her neck.
When Ursa asked what it was, Sabine explained—hastily, with a light flush and a little stammering—that it's nothing, really, just an old lightsaber crystal. Further questioning revealed that Ezra was the one to give it to her, and that it was his old lightsaber crystal, from the first lightsaber he made.
"Fascinating," Ursa remarked, wearing a mask of disinterest, and then bustled off to send another comm to the Jedi Council—this time asking them if there would be any problem with her daughter and that Jedi of hers marrying.
Their reply was short and concise.
Thank the Force, we were beginning to think you'd never ask.
~~~~
Sabine hadn't meant to fall in love.
She was the eldest child of the ruling family, and that meant she would need to marry logically. She could fall in love with her spouse once the vows were said and they were a team. Before then, it had to be all business. She wasn't going to get caught up in a romance with someone she could never really be with, and she wouldn't break her own heart.
But some things were just out of her control.
Her feelings for Ezra Bridger were one of those things.
Sabine didn't know when she started falling for him, but she realized it halfway down, and tried to find a way to stop it, but there was nothing to slow her fall, and she plummeted.
She fell and fell and fell, until the night before she left to go home, when Ezra gave her his old kyber crystal—and a soft kiss.
She ought to have pushed him away, but she didn't. Like a sentimental idiot, she'd melted into him, kissing him back, as fierce and heady as he'd been tender and sweet. And when both of them were so out of breath that they had to break apart, he'd whispered to her in a dazed wonder— "I think I love you."
Sabine hit rock bottom at full speed and shattered.
She couldn't live without him. She knew that now. He'd woven himself into her soul, and the idea of leaving him just then made her heart throb with regret.
But she had to go home, so she went, and he was in her thoughts every second of the way.
He was still in her thoughts at dinner that night—with the ghost of his embrace keeping her warm and the feel of his kiss still burning on her lips—when Mother brought up marriage.
Sabine barely heard the words her mother said. She knew this was coming. It was a surprise it hadn't happened sooner.
It would have been a mercy if it had happened sooner. Sabine wouldn't have known what she had to lose, then.
What she had to lose.
The thought brought a lump into her throat, making it hard to swallow, and her eyes started to sting.
Sabine rose, and asked to be excused, and didn't wait for an answer. She went back to her room, and because it was what she always did when she needed to talk, she called him.
"Mother thinks it's time for me to get married," she said.
"Oh."
Ezra's voice was hoarse and a little broken, and it broke her all the more. She said nothing in reply—her words were gone.
"Is there anything I can do?" he asked her softly.
Sabine would have said that there was nothing he could do at all. But the kyber crystal strung around her neck was warm to the touch, and as she traced her fingertips lonesomely along the smooth planes of its surface, an idea came to her.
It was an idea so reckless, so wild, so entirely irresponsible that it was impossible.
But Sabine could work with impossible.
"Well," she said. "There is something."
----
Caleb had commed Hera last night and asked her to be here for this discussion with Ezra. Apparently, the Council had reached out to Caleb last night with a message from Countess Wren, wherein she said that she was pretty sure it would be agreeable to all parties concerned if her daughter and Caleb's Padawan tied the knot, and that they might want to be quick about suggesting it before the two just up and eloped together. Caleb had messaged Hera, then, asking her to help him explain the situation to Ezra—who had spent the last eight years stubbornly and consistently insisting that he and Sabine were only friends, and might need some persuading to own up to his own feelings.
But when Hera showed up at the boys' quarters in the Temple the next morning, Ezra was nowhere in sight, and Caleb was slouched back on the couch, wheezing with laughter.
"Love? What is it?"
Caleb was laughing too hard to answer, and he just held out a piece of flimsi to her, indicating that it was the source of his amusement.
She took it and sat down beside him, reading it twice through before the meaning of it fully sank in.
Dear Master, Do you think the Council will be very annoyed that I got married without their permission? Like, I already said the vows and everything so it won't make me call off the elopement if they will, but it would be nice to know that Master Windu won't give me the Eyebrows Of Disappointment look when I get back from the honeymoon. See you in a couple weeks! Ezra Wren (née Bridger)
Hera huffed a rueful laugh under her breath.
"Well. That simplifies things."