Colors

It was a well-known fact that Sabine loved colors. Colors included those displayed by different species. Browns, golds, pale pinks, greens and purples. It was amazing how diverse each species was. When she first joined the crew, she had been fascinated by Hera, and not only because of her flying skills. The shades of green, the white patterns on her lekku, the color of her eyes that matched her skin tone, and the way her head-tails moved became objects of her obsession. She had spent long nights filling sketch books, mixing together paint colors to find the perfect skin tone.

But out of all the diverse colors and body parts on different species, eyes were her favorite. There was something rebellious about them. They saw what they wanted to see, and that was the truth. One of her favorite quotes was "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Eyes were a window into the soul, they reflected what was true. Eyes saw corruption, eyes saw love and pain and kindness. They sought out color and truth.

She had mastered Kanan's eyes, their soulful green color. Zeb's were easy, a stroke of yellow and green contrasting with his purple skin. After every supply run, she would record roughly painted eyes of the different people she saw. She god pretty damn good at eyes, if she was one to judge.

But when Ezra joined, her paints were put to shame.

His hair color was nothing new, a dark black with navy blue mixed in to add highlight. His skin tone was a tan golden color, with a little bit of pink mixed in. She would have gone so far as to say there was nothing special about him other than the Force if it weren't for his eyes.

Those damn eyes. Sabine often wondered what miracle of genetics gave them their color. It had to be something, some mutation. Hours were spent mixing and remixing paints, ruining some of her best brushes trying to find the right color. Thinking she had it, she would go to bed proud of herself, until the next day. She sometimes brought her sketchbook out, though she would refuse to let anyone see it. (She had more than a few saucy drawings of Kanan and Hera. If they wouldn't admit it, she'd make it real in art.) She would covertly stare at Ezra's eyes when he didn't notice; she'd rather not have him getting the wrong idea, and compare the colors she had tediously mixed the night before. Nothing was ever right. The blue was too light, too muddy, too bland.

Sabine was stubborn. She never gave up, but she was ready to declare Ezra's eyes impossible to draw. This then forced her into a tenacious cycle where she would get out her paints and mix them again and again for hours, refusing to admit defeat. There was something alive in his eyes, something indecipherable that she just couldn't figure out. Maybe it was the Force. But Kanan's eyes never seemed so alive, or so impossible.

That was it! Sabine sat up in bed. Scrambling for her sketch book in the dark, or at least one of them that had a few pages left, Sabine nearly fell out of bed. She turned on the light, squinting at its brightness. Holding onto that one word, she almost laughed. How had she not figured it out? It was the one thing everyone had, it was the thing that kept people living and fighting. It was what every single starbird she painted represented, what the Rebel Alliance fought for. What Kanan had lost so much of long ago. Order 66 had smashed it, broken the wing of his starbird. And just when it was flying again, torture had smashed it again. And even though Ezra's should have been smashed, murdered, and left behind long ago, Ezra had so much of it.

Hope.

A dash of blue, a pinpoint of black for the pupil, a highlight, and something almost gleaming, like a lightsaber blade. Sabine admired her work. This was it. Ezra's eye, with the one thing it seemed to lack every time she had attempted to draw it.

Hope. Nothing had ever looked so alive.