Author's Note: This crazy little fic came about as a prompt trade with SweetSinger2010 and ddaulton94. This time the prompt had to involve an AU element. Oh, boy, did ddaulton94 give me a doozy of a story to write.
Long story short, a while back he drew a really cool picture (he's good at that too) of an older Sabine and Ezra interrupting some "kids" trying to steal their ship. Sabine has a really cool fake eye in the picture. So the prompt was set it in that AU. Sabine and Ezra traveling on a ship with the "kids" they've taken in. Sabine needs to do maintenance on her prosthetic eye, and she asks Ezra to help. Also, they aren't romantically together yet.
I know right? What a prompt to work from…
I started writing and realized I was actually pretty uniquely suited to write this thing. Stick around for the end note for an explanation and a Life-Lesson™ from WestwardGlance. ;)
Seeing Clearly
"You know," Ezra said thoughtfully, as he leaned back in the pilot's chair, "We've kind of become Kanan and Hera."
Sabine had just entered the cockpit from behind him. She tapped him on the shoulder. "You're sitting in the wrong place." She nodded at the copilot's chair. "We both know where you belong."
He rolled his eyes lazily. "You know the ship manifest has my name on it. They're both mine, technically." Ezra stood and stretched, taking his time to shuffle over to his usual seat.
He apparently took too long, as Sabine pushed him out of her way and sat down with a scowl. "Technically means almost nothing. I'd like to see you keep this flying without me. You'd be grounded on some Outer Rim wasteland with no credits and a busted ship in a month's time."
Ezra chuckled and cleared his throat. "So as I was saying before you got all territorial…" He chose to ignore the venomous scowl Sabine gave him with her one eye. It wasn't something he would dare say to her face, but Sabine just wasn't as intimidating to him now that she had the prosthetic eye. She just looked too darn cool for him to be afraid of her. "...was that we've kind of become Kanan and Hera."
"Excuse me?" Sabine said quickly crossing her arms over her chest plate and turning to face him. "What in the name of the Manda is that supposed to mean."
Ezra stared at her blankly for a minute, going over the statement in his mind and looking for the landmine he'd missed. There was a hint of a flush to Sabine's cheeks, and he couldn't quite place where that had come from. "I mean, we fly around on a ship, taking on odd jobs, and end up being all around do-gooders. We're even taking in strays now. Seriously we're becoming Kanan and Hera."
Sabine stared at him for a moment, a very long awkward moment, Ezra thought, before she looked back at the console. "Oh," she said a little too cooley. "Yeah, I guess I can see that. But it's not really the same either. None of us were as young as Peeka and Tolm. Speaking of which, I got them into bed."
"And the older ones?" Ezra asked.
"Playing Cukikahd in the common room. They're fine. Stop worrying about them."
Ezra rubbed the back of his head, "Read me like an open datapad, huh?"
She scoffed. "Ezra, I know what you're thinking before you think it."
"Right," Ezra said, eyeing her. Then he smiled with a sudden idea.
"So… What am I thinking right now?"
Sabine's mouth dropped open, and she stammered. "I… Look that's not the way it works. It's not like reading your mind it's more like…"
"That's what I thought," Ezra chuckled.
Sabine rolled her one eye and groaned. "Fine. Let me guess. You're hungry."
"Not even close. Your mom commed today while you were out."
Sabine's eye went wide, and Ezra laughed again. "Well, what did she say Loth-Rat?! And why didn't you tell me earlier?"
"Oh, nothing. Said she'd check back tomorrow." he grinned wickedly. "And then we had a nice talk."
Sabine glared at him, and Ezra was pretty sure that steam shot out of her ears. "About what? You weren't talking about me were you?"
He had planned on leading her on, but couldn't keep a straight face and laughed out loud. "Are you kidding me? I'm terrified of your mom. I got off the comm as fast as I could politely get away. No way I'm subjecting myself to the Countess Wren longer than necessary."
Sabine looked relieved, nodded once, and then looked back out the front canopy. "That makes a bit more sense. Stay afraid of her Ezra. Stay very afraid of her." She let the conversation die and was quiet.
After a few minutes, Ezra broke the silence. "So what's so bad about us being like Kanan and Hera? Seems like something to aspire to."
Sabine looked at him and cocked an eyebrow, the one without a corresponding eye. "Nothing, well, mostly nothing. We're not completely like them. I mean they did have Jacen," she finished awkwardly and fell silent.
"Right," Ezra said as the pieces fell into place. Yeah, that was a difference. Of course, he'd naturally been in love with Sabine since he'd first laid eyes on her, but Sabine…?
Hera had insisted she would come around, especially after he and Sabine had started traveling together. But the truth was it seemed like she just wasn't interested. Even Hera was starting to grow puzzled. "You're a nice guy. I don't understand, Ezra." He didn't either, but he was determined that it wouldn't affect their friendship or partnership. He'd done his best to bury his feelings years ago, but unless Sabine was stupid, and he was pretty sure she wasn't, she'd have to know what was up.
Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Sabine was doing… something to her prosthetic eye. He watched in fascination, and she tapped it a few times. "Karabast," she muttered. "Time already."
"What's that?"
Sabine let out a long despondent sigh. "This model eye is good; you know what we paid for it. But the maintenance on this thing is… frustrating. It's time for me to pull it, sterilize it, and clean the socket again.
"What's so bad about that?"
Sabine made a face and chewed her lip. "Cleaning the eye? That's, that's fine. It's the socket," she shuddered briefly. "I don't really like touching my own eye socket."
Ezra looked at the metallic eye. "Gross, but necessary, I guess. How often do you have to do that?" Sabine tended to lock herself in her room anytime she removed her prosthetic eye. Ezra was pretty sure he'd only seen her without it once in the year since she'd had it. Of course, now that there were children and teenagers on board that made sense. He hated to think what Peeka would do if she saw Sabine missing an eye…
"Once every couple weeks." she paused for a minute then turned a light shade of pink. "Do you think…? No never mind. Sorry."
Ezra looked at her, confused. "What? What were you going to…?"
"Forget it," she cut him off. "Stupid thought. Don't ask."
He eyed her and sighed. "Sabine, don't push me away. What were you going to ask?" They had been traveling together for many years, and sometimes it was all he could do to keep her communicating and open with him. After all this time Sabine still had a bit of loner streak in her that she retreated to when she became nervous or embarrassed. Maybe someday he'd crack the last of the shell off of her.
"I was... " she started and then paused. Sabine looked down at the control panel in front of her. "Look I hate cleaning the socket. I know it's silly, it's my own face and all, but I was wondering if maybe… If maybe you'd give me a hand with that part." She had started to talk rapidly, perhaps to make sure she kept going and didn't gizka out. "It's not hard; I can guide you through it. You…" she glanced nervously at Ezra. "You can say, no. I understand if you think it would be weird."
Ezra was surprised, at her openness, at her wanting his help, at her even allowing him to be in the room while she took care of the prosthetic. But Ezra knew not to show that surprise, that it could only hurt her. He smiled and nodded. "Anything you need Sabine."
Sabine returned from her room with her maintenance kit. She sat it on the console between her and Ezra and sighed. She felt like a child, immature and silly. In truth, she wasn't even really sure why she wanted Ezra's help. For over a year now she had been cleaning her own scarred eye socket herself. When she told Ezra that she hated it, she'd told him the truth. The sight of the pink scarred flesh unnerved her in a way that she'd never admitted to anyone. Maybe just this once Ezra could help, and she wouldn't have to look at it. She felt her cheeks flushing again as she stared at her maintenance kit.
"Hey, Sabine? You okay?" Ezra asked gently.
Of course, he'd seen her turn red. "I'm fine. I just… Feel a little silly right now."
"Oh?" he said simply.
And he's all calm and understanding right now, she thought with annoyance. "I actually, kind of hate looking at all the scarring beneath the prosthetic," she admitted slowly, still unsure of why she was telling him this. Maybe she wanted him to understand. Maybe she wanted relief from the unease it caused her. Maybe she wanted to let him relieve her of that unease. "That's why I wear this thick headband to cover it," she admitted, tapping her temple. "Less I see it, the better."
Deep down she wondered if she would ever be okay with seeing her damaged face. When she'd first come out of the surgery, the shock of how different she had looked was enough to make her cry. A gaping hole in her face where her eye had once been, scarred, pink and wrinkled. She'd been alone, with only an old 2-1B for company. And when the droid had patiently taught her how to care for her new bit of hardware, she'd lost it. She was glad Ezra hadn't been there to see that. The rational part of her knew that he would have been patient and understanding, but her more emotional side had wanted to crawl into a hole and never leave.
She'd brushed the whole thing off and tried to act normal when Ezra visited her after surgery. Appearances had to be kept up, and her durasteel shell couldn't be allowed show any cracks. All the while she grieved over the fact that her body had been permanently altered in a way she wasn't even remotely prepared for.
As the months went on she cursed herself and her own stubbornness. Sabine knew that if she just talked to Ezra about her eye and the stress of adapting to it, she'd feel a little better. The ability to just vent to a listening ear probably would have done wonders.
But she didn't, because thinking about Ezra just brought up other complicated topics. Sabine knew that the relationship she and Ezra had right now, though healthy, wasn't… quite what it was supposed to be. This was something else that she'd managed to bury, deep down where she hoped it would never see the light of day. But sometimes these feelings bubbled up, unheeded and unwelcome. Ezra suggesting that the two of them were like Kanan and Hera had caused a bit of an eruption, and she'd had to tamp down on that hard. Because, truthfully, they were like them in just about every way but the one that Sabine was beginning to realize was the one she needed the most.
It was just a matter of biting down on her ridiculous pride and letting Ezra in. However, that was supposed to happen. She wasn't sure she was ready to admit to herself just what he meant to her, let alone admit it to him.
Ezra gave her a goofy grin, and she realized she'd gotten lost in her thoughts. If he was about to say something stupid, then she was going to…
"Hey, this works out great then. You don't want to look at the scars? Fine. You won't have to look at them tonight. Just guide me through what you need me to do, and it'll be done in no time."
Sabine let out a deep breath and tried to calm her inner turmoil. Reaching up she carefully removed her headband and exposed the area around what used to be her left eye. She laid the band aside and, putting three fingers to her prosthetic eye, gave it a twist. It disengaged from the socket mounted into her skull. Her vision suddenly halved as the neural implant on her optic nerve suddenly went dark. It wasn't as if her eye was closed; it was just gone as if the prosthetic had never been there.
"Okay so here it is," she said, holding the prosthetic out for Ezra to see. It looked like little more than a smooth metal spheroid with an aperture on one side. "This part's easy. I just pop out the power supply, like this, and put it onto the power station so that its charge will hold till the next maintenance. Then I'll drop the whole prosthetic into the solution here so it'll be good and sterile."
"Easy enough," he agreed. "What's next."
"Well, I let those sit until I finish with the socket. There's... two parts to this. Okay come here, take a look." She leaned her head onto the back of the pilot's seat. He stepped over above her where he could look down into her bare socket. Sabine felt a twinge of self-consciousness, but if Ezra was at all bothered by what he saw, he didn't show it. "First I need to make sure the contacts on the neural implant are good and clean. Don't want any dirt or corrosion in between the prosthetic and implant. I'd rather they last as long as possible with how much we paid for them."
"Right, that makes sense," Ezra said nodding. "What do I do?"
"That swab right there. Gently clean the contacts on the implant. They aren't fragile, so you don't have to worry too much about it."
Ezra hesitated for a moment. "This won't hurt you if it touches your skin, will it?"
"No, it's fine. It won't hurt me. And you'd just end up cleaning it off anyway." Ezra leaned in and very gently reached into the socket of her missing eye and began to swab the implant. Sabine felt the gentle touch of his hand against her forehead more than once as he did as he was told.
After a moment he stood up straight. "Okay that's done, I think. I hope I did it right."
"I don't really think you could do it wrong," Sabine shrugged. "Now the next part…" she swallowed. "That next part is the part I don't like. If you remember when I had the implant put in there were two options, leave the scar tissue, or do a graft to make it nice and smooth."
"Right, I remember. I seem to remember you insisting on leaving the scar tissue because it was cheaper and we were already spending a lot of credits."
"Yeah, well turns out we should have splurged. The folds of skin in the scar tissue are a bit of an infection risk, so I need to make sure and clean in between all the folds to make sure there's no dead skin or sweat or anything else that could… that could turn into a problem."
Ezra stepped back from Sabine. "What is it?" she asked, suddenly self-conscious.
He pursed his lips. "I had no idea this is what you had to do. I'm… I'm so sorry Sabine. I can't imagine having to..." he trailed off sadly
Sabine looked away from him with her one eye and blinked away tears. "Look, it's fine. It's just part of my life now, and I don't need you worrying over… Look I can't believe I even asked. This is stupid. I'll…" She started to move as if to get up from her chair.
Ezra stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. "I've got it, Sabine," Ezra said. His voice was soft and warm in a way that calmed her frayed nerves.
"Okay." She whispered, her heart fluttering in a way that made her head spin a little. She pointed at a different swab. "Use that one there. Also, uh… be careful. There's not exactly an awful lot between that scar tissue and my brain so…"
"Trust me. I'll be gentle."
Sabine sighed and leaned her head against the back of the chair again. Standing behind her, Ezra gently leaned over her and, using the swab, began to very carefully clean the socket. In truth, she didn't feel much, as the scar tissue there had very few nerves. Just enough to know that he was probably doing his job correctly. What she did feel was his other hand gently cradling her face. And he was gentle, so very gentle with her. She didn't know what to think, what to feel. But she relished the closeness and tenderness of his care.
The moment was intimate, in a way that Sabine had not been expecting, that she had never known she needed. And most of all it was nice to have someone share her burden. Sure, it wasn't like she was spilling out all the details, but she was pretty sure he was starting to understand. For the first time in months, she felt that maybe someday she could be at ease with herself again. But all too soon Ezra stepped away and took his hands from her face, and Sabine sat motionless, feeling a pang of disappointment. "There," he said. "Good to go until next time."
Sabine sat up abruptly, unable to look Ezra in the eye, and blinked away more tears from her one eye. It was done. It was clean, and she hadn't had to see it or be reminded of what it looked like…
"I'm not going to lie," Sabine said, making up her mind suddenly. "I'd let you do that every time it needs to be done if it means I don't have to see or touch that blasted scar tissue." And if it means being subjected to such tender ministrations... She felt her cheeks pinken again and set to work reinstalling the prosthetics power supply and getting it reset on the implant so she wouldn't have to look at Ezra.
She could see him in her peripheral vision, regarding her quietly. "If it helps, then it would be my pleasure, Sabine."
She finished setting the prosthetic and turned it on. Her vision doubled, blurry for a moment then resolved itself as her brain readjusted to stimulus from both optic nerves. Finally, she slipped the headband back over her head to finish disguising her damaged face. She turned to look at Ezra, who had sat back in the copilot's seat and nodded. "I… Might appreciate the help again sometime… I'll let you know." I'll let you know every time it needs to be done, she thought to herself. And maybe, just maybe, we can have a nice talk about some more serious topics.
"But now?" she continued aloud. "Now I'm going to go chase the older ones to bed."
Ezra glanced at the chrono. "Have fun with that. There's going to be some whining and complaining."
"Hey. We've got a busy day tomorrow, and I need people alert when we touch down on Jomark."
Ezra burst out laughing. Sabine frowned. "Alright, laser-brain. What's so funny?"
"We really are Kanan and Hera. Remember how much we grumbled when Hera gave early lights out orders."
Sabine sighed and shook her head. But she did smile as she left the room. Later that night she thought about Ezra's hands on her face and how gentle he had been as he had cleaned the scar tissue in her eye socket. She thought about their nomadic lifestyle, the places they'd been and the people they'd helped. She thought about their charges that were hopefully asleep already. And then she thought about how in many ways they were two halves of one machine, one person. Not unlike Kanan and Hera had been.
Sabine smiled to herself in the dark. She'd pushed down these uncomfortable feelings about Ezra for years. Maybe it was time she let them surface. See where they led. Ironic that it took the loss of an eye to see clearly. She closed her one good eye, thankfully for it and for Ezra, and fell asleep almost immediately, peaceful and content.
Author's Note: Sorry for the long note here at the end but I really hope you'll read through it.
This was an interesting little story for me. It turned out to be a lot more serious than I anticipated. Curious about why I said I was uniquely suited to write this? I've been there. Nearly a decade ago I spent a summer in the hospital with Ulcerative Colitis and had my entire colon removed. I lived with an Ileostomy for two years. For those of you not familiar with what that entails, my small intestine literally stuck two inches out of my abdomen. A fancy medical bag was attached to the skin (and had to be regularly changed out). I'm sorry if the thought of that is unpleasant to you. Truth is an ileostomy is unpleasant, but when the options are ileostomy or death, the choice is pretty clear. In my case, I was able to have a series of surgeries to "rebuild" my digestive track and I now have a healthy and (mostly) functioning digestive track. (surprise: you can live quite well without a colon)
But the process of waking up from surgery and seeing your own intestine outside your body and adjusting to maintaining an ileostomy is... stressful. Realizing that your body has been permanently altered brings on a lot of emotions to work through. Thankfully my wife is amazing and together, along with support from my extended family and church family, we adjusted and got through it. I can't imagine having to endure that kind of life change without the support of others at your side. So yes, my own perspective ended up informing Sabine in this story.
And the life lesson? If you have a family member or friend that has had an ostomy, a mastectomy, amputation, or any other sort of big life-changing surgery, give them a hug some time. They've been through a lot and could use your support! Some things just aren't meant to be endured alone, and you may just make a long hard road easier for someone that needs the help.
Make sure you read SweetSinger2010 piece Pieces that came from this prompt. If you know her work you know she's writes an amazing Hera. You could say she's the best in the business. So naturally, I gave her a prompt in which Hera had died and Kanan was the one that lived. (Yes, I am a horrible human being...)
I would direct you to ddaulton94's fic but unfortunately, he had to back out of the prompt. (sad face)
If you're a fan of my writing and don't follow me, you won't have seen me recently. Rather than writing about Rebels I've been working on a long Obi-Wan piece in the main Star Wars category. Please check it out!
Thanks for reading!