To the Guest reviewer (It's always Guests, interestingly enough) who commented, and I quote, "Why the f*ck did you write this Sabezra sh*t?" I wrote it because I enjoy it. Clearly, you don't enjoy reading it. So, my response is, why in the Nine Corellian Hells are you reading it, then? All you did is waste your time. Your time. Not mine; It barely took me a second to read your review.

Two weeks later

Ezra hadn't woken up yet.

I was on the verge of crying for the fifth time in a week. Instead, I held Ezra's hand, willing him to wake up.

It wasn't working.

Come on, Ezra. You'll be okay….

Right?

Of course you will. You can't die. I won't allow it.

Ezra, if you die, I'll kill you.

I swear, I will.

You'll break your promise, too…

Remember a couple weeks ago? When you promised me a family?

You still have to make good on that.

If you don't… I'll be...

Well, I'll be angry.

You don't want to make me angry, Ezra.

You know what happens when I'm angry.

You don't want to make me angry and you don't want to make me cry.

Fek, I only cried for you once before this month.

The day you left.

Left Lothal, I mean. You left a lot, but I knew you were coming back soon…

That didn't really make the anxiety go away, though.

The thoughts that one day, you would come back in a body bag.

Or worse, not at all…

That's half of the reason why I tried to go with you on every mission I could.

Of course, I'd never admit to myself what the other reason was…

I…

I was scared to tell you that I loved you.

I was always telling myself, "This mission. This time I'll tell him."

I never did.

I guess you leaving was the shock I needed.

So to speak.

The only sound in the hospital room was the steady beeping of the monitor that tracked his heart rate. I had been here for the last week-ish. At first the doctors tried to get me to leave, but somehow Ezra started to show improvement the exact moment I arrived. They let me stay and offered me a small room near the "personal ward" that Ezra had been put in for 'extensive burn and blunt force injuries to the patient's body, induced by a small package of explosive material.' In Basic, that meant that he was in this ward because he was a special case. It wasn't exactly special. The walls, ceiling and floor were all still stark-white. The door was still uninteresting steel. It was still cold to ward off some disease. Still had the basic medbay gear that I had grown oh so fond of during the Battle for Lothal.

I still remember bombs dropping.

Like when TIEs were strafing the Ghost.

How many times had that happened?

Dozens.

We got used to it, though.

"Hey, Hera, we've got TIEs."

"Well, shoot them."

It was exciting at first, but after a while, strafing patterns got predictable.

Not boring, exactly, but not incredibly exciting either.

Like that one time, on Bothawui.

Remember that, Ezra? When there were, like, eighty bombers?

The Great Bothawui Nerf-Shoot? Remember that?

When we each tagged six or seven TIEs?

We had X-Wings helping, though.

They… well, helped, of course.

They weren't exactly inviting the bombers to granite, flimsi, knife, were they?

So many thoughts were swirling through my head it was difficult to see just one. Like having a hundred holovids on the same screen at full volume while people screamed random numbers at you and you were being zapped with small volts of electricity at random intervals.

How many hundreds of times have we been shot at, Ezra?

And you dodged it all without armor, but the moment you get some proper kriffin' protection, you step into a fekkin' landmine?

You absolute di'kut.

I guess you're not a total idiot, though…

You picked up Mando'a pretty quickly.

Well, quickly-ish.

I still remember hearing you trying to pronounce 'Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum' over and over again.

That was your gift to me, wasn't it? Right before you left, that's what you told me.

"Ni kar'tayl gar darasuum, ner akaanior ladee."

Literally meaning, I love you, my warrior lady.

You took so long to get it perfect, to the point where you lost some sleep because of it...

You're so cute when you're sleeping, Ezra.

'That sounds messed up, Sabine.'

It's true, though.

Wait… that wasn't me.

Was it?

'No, it's not.'

All of a sudden, I could hear Ezra's voice inside my head, clear as day. But he wasn't talking.

H-how are you-

'Sabine, this is gonna sound confusing, but I'm using a type of telepathy to speak to you.'

Wait, so you're talking without actually talking?

'Yep.'

How? You know what, forget I asked that. Can you do this with anyone?

'No. I can only do it with people that I've formed a close bond with, like you, or Kanan, or Hera. The stronger the bond, the easier it is. For instance, with Governor Azadi, I really need to concentrate. But with you… well, we're close enough that this is almost as easy as talking normally.'

Wait. So, you're telling me that you can speak without actually speaking.

'Yes.'

And you only do it today, instead of any other time?

'Well, Kanan kinda had a bit of a talk with me and explained a bit of this.'

Wait, you talked with Kanan?!

'Yes. I can see if he can, uh... 'contact' you as well.'

This seems remarkably normal for you, Ezra.

'That's rich, considering the fact that you haven't left my side for the past week.'

I smiled. Maybe I'm just possessive, blueberry.

'Yeah, maybe… or maybe you can't believe that you let me step into a trap and nearly die, and now you're kicking yourself over it. Thanks for the armor, by the way. It saved my life.'

That's what armor does, dimwit. It saves lives.

'Well, thanks anyways.'

Thank my mother. She's the one that made it. I just painted it for you.

'Your mother made this for me? That's a first.'

Actually, I kinda explained the fact that I was going to comb the galaxy for you, and she made it for you under the pretense of "making sure you don't get lost again."

'I won't. It was quite boring.'

…

'And, of course, you're here, and I still have a promise to keep.'

I smiled. Make sure you do.

'I'm a man of my word, Sabine.'

I know. I'm just making sure you don't forget.

'Hey, it's been on my mind for the past ten- or so- years. I'm not forgetting anytime soon, my lady. Actually, we can make good on that promise right after I get out of here, if you want.'

I blushed. Ezra…

'What? Nobody can hear us. We're fine.'

Yeah. I guess. Except maybe Slater…

'Slater?'

Jedi Medic. Order 66 survivor. Came here about three days ago, on recommendation of General Rahm Kota.

'Ah. How is the good General?'

Doing fine. Apparently, he's helping train New Republic Commandos with K Squad.

'K Squad?'

Republic Commandos. Imperial deserters that willingly ignored Order 66. Joined up with Kota as soon as they heard of him. Blew up a bunch of Imp ar'gore to prove their loyalty and then proceeded to train a bunch more Infiltrators, blow up more stuff, train Commandos, blow up more stuff, help Old Republic clone deserters reach Kota, blow up even more stuff, helped train a few ARC/Mandalorian/Infiltrator groups, and are currently blowing up anything the Empire calls a shipyard. They're amazing.

'High praise.'

They deserve it. They're experts in shooting, explosives, structures, data-mining, climbing, infiltration, you name it. Amazing.

'Data-mining?

Ah… polite way of saying hacking.

'Oh.'

A long silence followed that.

Okay, I'm going to try and actually speak now.

I kinda mind-nodded. You do that. Then I held my breath, hoping that this would work.

"Hello?" I heard. I laughed with joy. Ezra opened his eyes and sat up, although with some difficulty.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, blueberry," I said, fondly. Ezra smiled warmly and brushed a tear off my cheek.

"Never left it," he responded. I bit my lip.

"For a few seconds after your run-in with the trap, your vitals were… well, they were null. So you actually were… well… I-I…"

I choked on my words. Then, I sniffed a bit. Emotions, man; they're so unpredictable.

Ezra stared at me deeply, intently. I stared back.

"Stop crying, Sabine. It's not a good look for you."

"Dead doesn't look fantastic on you either."

"Well, good thing I got rid of that look."

There was a long pause of about five seconds before either of us spoke.

"You better not try it out again, Ezra."

"I won't."

"Promise."

"I promise not to die until you do so as well."

"Now keep that promise."

"Yes ma'am," Ezra said, smiling widely and saluting cheekily. I wasn't sure whether to kiss him or slap him. I settled on kissing him, before realizing something else.

"Oh! I repaired your armor for you," I said, grabbing Ezra's armor from my room and presenting it to him. It had four streaks of orange, one down the front, one down each of the arms, and one down the back. The helmet was also almost entirely orange, with a blue outline around the helmet. The shoulder armor had a dark-green Phoenix on one side and a four on the other. The four had the words Protection Through Active Offense carefully painted under it. I had put some dark-red on the hand-armor, because red is a color that signified honoring a parent. On the chest armor, there was an orange outline of a phoenix, with the actual phoenix in blue. The lower leg armor, however, was permanently singed black, so I had painted it black, for justice.

Ezra had an insane grin on his face. I guess I did good.

(As I'm writing this, Ezra is looking over my shoulder, telling me that I did do good. Hooray! And there's my recall to active duty in the Resistance because of the First Order's invasion! Not yay!)