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Sabine wakes with a ragged gasp, choking back the scream that attempted to rip her throat and shooting up in bed. Heaving breaths in and out, she wipes the cold sweat off her brow with her fingers. She reaches over to the water beside her bunk, taking in big gulps and then setting the glass down with a soft thunk.
Her breathing evens out eventually, so she eases back down onto her pillow, all that was left to do was go back to sleep. Her eyes flutter shut, ready to be taken by the darkness, only for them to fly back open mere seconds later.
As soon as her eyes closed, all she could see were the horrors of her past, of people being disintegrated in their own armor, her people. It was all her fault.
She kept reciting to herself the things she knew to be true. She destroyed the Duchess. She erased the blueprints. Her monster couldn’t hurt anyone anymore. It didn’t help.
All at once, she was no longer tired, so she tossed her blankets aside and clambered out of bed, out the door and into the hallway. She pads around throughout the Ghost, silently as not to wake anyone, and maybe a little aimlessly. She isn’t sure how but she winds up at the door to the kitchen. What better to take her mind off things than a midnight snack raid? Not that the Ghost’s kitchen held much, mostly ration bars, but there were a handful of other things they tended to keep on hand because ration bars got old very quickly.
The doors open with a hiss, and she shuffles in, quickly realizing she is not the only one going on a midnight snack raid.
“Ezra, what are you doing?” She whisper-yells. He nearly jumps out of his skin, whirling around to face her from where he’d been standing over the stove.
“Oh, hi Sabine.” He didn’t answer her question, just turned back to what he was doing. She narrows her eyes at him but doesn’t press it, moving all the way into the kitchen and heading towards the cupboard instead. She pilfers through the cabinets, looking for that one box of crackers she had hidden. She does find it, but not where she put it, and certainly not in the same condition she left it in. It was completely empty.
She was going to murder Zeb.
Letting out a groan of frustration, she angrily tosses it in the waste bin, which catches the attention of Ezra. He doesn’t actually comment on her predicament, opting to ask intrusive questions instead. “So what are you doing up at this hour?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” She answers shortly, still frustrated about her crackers.
“Nightmares?” It catches her off guard, because how did he get it on the first try? Her lack of response may as well be a ‘yes’. She turns around to look at him, and even in the dim light she can see the haunted look in his eyes that seemed to say ‘me too’.
Ezra moves away from the pot of whatever he was making on the stove. She didn’t even know he knew how to use the stove. Opening the upper cabinets he pulls out two mugs, setting them down and picking up the pot, pouring its contents into the mugs.
During this Sabine simply watches him curiously, not speaking until he presses one of the two mugs into her hands. “What is this?”
“Oh, it’s just something my mom used to make for me when I had nightmares.”
Sabine’s heart clenched, knowing this was probably something sacred to him, he’d told her before he didn’t have many things left to remember his parents by, so she knew this drink, whatever it was, was part of his way to keep them close. Taking a sip of it, she is pleasantly surprised with it’s flavor. It definitely contained nerf milk, which was the only kind of milk they could get consistently on Lothal, but there were warm spices Sabine couldn’t name, and something else much sweeter. She wasn’t aware that a hug had a flavor but here it was.
“Ezra, this is incredible.” He rubs the back of his neck awkwardly at her praise, before taking a sip of his own mug. He takes a seat at the counter, and she takes the one beside him. All is quiet a few moments as they sip on their drinks before Ezra has to go and ruin the silence she was starting to enjoy.
“So… do you wanna… talk about it?” No. She absolutely did not want to talk about it. Not to him, not to anyone, but the way he was looking at her was just so disarming, so encouraging that she nearly spilled her entire life’s story right then and there. How did he do that? To prevent just that from happening, she pokes him in the arm, turning it back on him.
“You first.”
He takes in a deep breath and sets down his mug. “I was there… the day my parents got arrested. The troopers did it in front of me, they didn’t even care. I was only seven. I had to watch as they hauled them off.”
His voice catches, and even in the dim light she could see the tears rolling down his face. “I was so scared.”
Tentatively, she reaches her hand out, holding it open for him to take if he wanted to. She didn’t want to force her comfort on him, but he seemed to need it. He takes it, and laces their fingers loosely, and the tension in his shoulders seems to loosen instantly. There was something about holding his hand that just felt right.
“Sometimes, when I dream, I’m there again and I know what’s going to happen and I am completely helpless to stop it.”
She doesn’t have any wise words of comfort, not the way Kanan and Hera probably would. What she can do is keep holding his hand, so that's what she does.
She doesn’t know how long she sits with him like that, but eventually he gives her a look, and she knows it’s him asking her to open up. She supposes it’s only fair.
“I’ve done some… bad things, Ezra. Really bad things.” She can’t even bring herself to tell him what things, because saying it out loud might make her vomit. “And I’ve tried to do better, and I’ve tried to make them right, and I’ve tried to outrun them but I can’t. I just feel so guilty and everytime I close my eyes I see it all again… I’m an awful person.”
He squeezes her hand gently, and she looks up at him, a singular tear rolling down the side of her face. She couldn’t believe herself. Sabine Wren did not cry. Yet here she was, holding this twerp’s hand and crying. He reaches out his hand and brushes the tear from her cheek, not giving it the victory of rolling down her entire face. It was a simple gesture, but something about his fingers on her cheek felt so intimate.
“Sabine, it doesn’t matter what you did then. What matters is what you choose to do now. I may not know what happened, but I do know this. You are a good person Sabine Wren, you’re the best person I know.” His voice was so earnest, so full of conviction because he genuinely believed it, it almost caused her to shed another tear. It was definitely exactly what she needed to hear.
“Thank you, Ezra.” She squeezes his hand, and he smiles at her softly.
They sit in comfortable silence awhile, both just glad to have a companion to face the horrors of their minds with. Eventually she untangles their fingers and stands. “I really need to be going to bed now.”
“Yeah me too.” He takes his mug and hers, placing him in the sink. That was the thing about Ezra, he was so unbelievably kind, and so willing to do anything for anybody, even when he didn’t realize it. It was one of the things she lov…, she liked about him.
When Sabine crawls back into bed that night, she has the most peaceful sleep of her entire life, any and all thoughts of nightmares gone.
-
Years later, Sabine clutches a mug in the middle of the night, filled with a drink whose recipe she was given after the first night she drank it. She is no longer afraid of the tears that fall down her face. For him the drink was a reminder of his family, for her it is a reminder of him. This time, her nightmares are no longer comforted by the boy with the pretty blue eyes, they are about how she lost him.