A/N: Heeeeyyyyy, so this is definitely a tone shift after the last two installments, working back up to happy and light. (I swear I started this whole thing with fluff in mind!) The length ran away with me in this chapter, so buckle up. Huge shout-out to RagnarDanneskjold (read his fic, "Crumbling," btw if you want some Sabine in your life!) for helping me get ideas rolling, making sure I've got this Ezrabine thing right-ish, and generally beta-ing this string of nonsense I've been writing. Very. Much. Appreciated.


TLC

After they visited the refinery site, something dark and heavy lifted from Ezra's shoulders. Not immediately, but it lifted. Day by day, he found it easier to close his eyes and sleep at night, easier to confide in Sabine when he couldn't, easier to look away from the brokenness of the past. They finally, finally poured out their pain to each other, picking apart the last five years and everything they'd been through on their own. And they put it behind them.

If Ezra hadn't been in love with Sabine before, the last few weeks would have done it for sure. As they worked through his nightmares and everything else, she showed a tenderness and patience he honestly didn't know she had. Quiet words and soothing touches were not something he would've associated with the fierce Sabine he met a decade ago. He knew that she was still a stubborn Mandalorian; sharp-tongued, hot-tempered, and more than capable of holding her own when they sparred hand-to-hand. She was still all the things that attracted him to her in the first place. But this new softness he was discovering—he loved that, too. He was completely head-over-heels for the walking contradiction that was Sabine Wren, and he wanted to shout it from the tower rooftop.

She was still Sabine, though, and neither needed nor wanted grand gestures or speeches from him. Her heart had been won with loyalty and quiet affection and would continue to respond to the same. So Ezra did what he could. When he got up before her, he fixed her caf just the way she liked it. He sat quietly nearby when she painted. Let her decide how close she wanted them to be when they were on the sofa watching the HoloNet. He still teased her, flirted poorly with her, aggravated her just for the fun of it. It all seemed to be going well enough, and if she was feeling any lack of attention from him, she had neither said nor done anything to let on, but Ezra couldn't shake the feeling that he could be doing more. Without even realizing it, Ezra began searching for some way he could truly repay what she had done for him.

Eventually, he got his chance.

Ezra woke up in the middle of the night when the mattress jerked as Sabine jumped out of bed. "S'bine?" She didn't answer, running toward the 'fresher. Ezra sat up and squinted at the chrono, rubbing bleary eyes. It was oh-three-hundred. He considered going back to sleep; she'd get him if she needed him, right? His feet were on the floor before he realized he'd decided to get out of bed.

He stood outside the 'fresher door, listening to the unmistakable sound of retching from within. It made him feel miserable for her. "Sabine?" He called softly.

Again, no answer. The sani flushed and the sink turned on. Unless he missed his guess, she was rinsing her mouth and vigorously brushing her teeth. The water turned off and the door finally opened, Sabine leaning in the frame.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." Her voice was far too low. She looked at him with glassy, bloodshot eyes.

"Are...you okay?"

"Yeah, totally," she mumbled. "I was just feeling a little—"

Ezra reached out and touched her forehead. She was hot. "You're burning up, Sabine."

She shook her head. "I'm cold."

"Yeah, but you're burning up," he reiterated. She shrugged and he narrowed his eyes. "Are you…coming back to bed?"

"Go on, I'm just gonna stand here a second," she said, dismissing him with her hand. She leaned heavily on the doorframe.

"Sabine, I'm not just gonna—"

"Ezra, it's nothing. I just need some air." Sabine stood up fully as if to drive the point home. It had the opposite effect. She stumbled, reaching out with an arm for a door frame that was no longer there, and found Ezra instead.

Ezra had known what was coming and closed the space between them in anticipation. Ducking and putting her arm over his shoulders, he braced his arm behind her knees and lifted her up. She gasped at the motion. "I've got you, Sabine."

She put her head on his shoulder as he walked back to the bedroom. "I think…I'll be okay?" She said thickly. "I just don't feel good."

"I know you don't." He set her down in her spot on the bed, helping her pull the covers up.

She leaned her elbows on her knees, holding her head in her hands. "Grab me a couple pillows from the back of the closet, would you? I don't want to lay down."

Pillows retrieved, he adjusted them behind her so she was half-sitting up in bed. "Head hurt?"

"Yeah, started yesterday."

Now that Ezra was thinking about it, she had seemed subdued, but he hadn't been able to tell she was feeling bad. "What else?"

"I don't know. Sore throat, stuffy nose, achy, feverish?"

"Sabine!" His jaw dropped. "Why didn't you say anything?"

She shook her head. "I thought it would go away if I ignored it long enough."

"How did you live so long by yourself?" He groused under his breath, standing up.

"What?"

"I said—I'm gonna go get the med-kit. Be right back."

Ezra went to the 'fresher, making a bee-line for the bag of medical necessities Sabine kept in there. He opened the bag, rifling through its contents. Bandages, ointments, basic medications, and—ah. The thermometer. Ezra went back to the bedroom with the kit, finding Sabine asleep. Her eyes cracked open when he sat down. "What are you doing?"

"Need to know what we're dealing with." He turned the thermometer on and waited for its ready beep before he pressed the scanner to her temple. When it beeped again, Ezra looked at the display, whistling.

"Congraaaatulations, Ms. Wren," he drawled, affecting the accent of a HoloNet game show host. "You are super sick."

Sabine rolled her eyes. "Give me that." Weakly, she grabbed the thermometer from him and read the display herself. "Oh."

Her temperature was over one hundred and two degrees.

"Looks like you picked yourself up a nice case of Loth-flu," Ezra said, forehead creasing.

"Just call it 'flu,' Ezra." She returned irritably. "I know it's Loth-flu. We're on Lothal."

He held up his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay. Flu."

"You shouldn't stay in bed with me," she said suddenly. "You'll get sick, too."

"No way am I leaving you alone like this." To emphasize his point, Ezra tucked his legs under the covers as he dug in the med-kit for a fever reducer to give to Sabine. "And anyway, I've been exposed to whatever you have now. I'll either get sick or I won't." He popped two tablets in her hand. "Chew."

She complied, chasing the chalky medicine down with the glass of water on her nightstand. "Okay," she said, pulling the blankets up to her chin. "Stay—but don't complain when you feel like you're dying. I'll just say 'I told you so.'"

Ezra nodded. "Deal." He kissed her temple and her skin felt unnervingly warm—he wondered if he shouldn't make her drink more water to keep dehydration at bay. But she was already asleep, the crease between her brows indicating a fitful night ahead. Ezra lay wakeful and ready in case she needed him.


Sabine did sleep through the rest of the night. But when she woke up at ten the next morning, it was with body-shaking chills and the feeling that her skin had ten-thousand angry nerve endings per square inch. The bedcovers were so heavy and the weight made her skin ache; inconvenient, considering she was violently cold. Ezra's hand grazing her forehead was the worst of all. She recoiled from his touch with a jerk.

"Oh, please don't," she begged. She couldn't tell if that was hurt or concern in his eyes. She couldn't look at him for long in any case—even her eyes hurt and felt swollen and strained. "I just—everything aches."

"Okay," he said. "What do you need?"

"I feel hotter than last night." She knew that didn't answer the question at all, but it was the only thing coming to mind.

He was already reaching for the fever reducers. "You've gotta drink something, Sabine."

The very idea made her stomach churn. She shook her head on the pillow as she chewed the tablets. "This'll be all I can do."

He made a disgruntled sound. "As soon as they kick in and bring your temperature down, I'm coming at you with copious amounts of water."

"'Kay." Sabine wanted to rib him and ask when he'd started using vocabulary words like "copious," but she barely managed to chew and swallow the tablets before she was asleep again.

The next time she woke, she was hot and threw all her covers aside. She turned her head and saw Ezra sitting cross-legged against the headboard, datapad in his hand, just as casual as you please, trying not to act like he'd been watching her intently.

"How long was I out?" Sabine made a face at the sound of her own voice, scratchy and cracked and barely-there.

"Hour and a half? Maybe two." He handed her a glass of water and she sat up, taking it gratefully. "How do you feel?"

"Better than earlier?" Sabine guessed the only reason she was able to sit upright now was because the medicine had brought her fever down a degree or two. She drank the water slowly, reveling in how it seemed to cool her from the inside out. "Were…you here the whole time?"

He froze. "Is that not okay?"

"It's just—gross." She saw something cross his face and rushed to correct herself. "For you, I mean. Watching me be sick is probably not the most fun you've ever had."

"I'm pretty sure 'not the most fun' I ever had was when I fell off the Ghost and almost died because Chopper was throwing garbage at me. This?" He grinned, nudging her very gently. "Hanging out with you when you are physically too weak to leave the room if I'm annoying you? Sixteen-year-old me is doing backflips right now."

"Twenty-five-year-old you is a loser, Ezra Bridger." She tried her best to sound snarky, but the last syllable of his name was lost in a fit of coughing. "Oh, good," she mumbled when she could breathe again. Ezra tapped her glass of water, still in her hand, prompting her to finish it. She did. The initial relief the water gave her was quickly fading as she realized her throat felt like it had been sliced by a dozen hot knives and suddenly, she was shaking with chills again. She looked at Ezra, tears pricking her eyes. She was just so karking miserable.

"I know," he said, opening his arms to her. "I know." She leaned against him, not caring that contact with another human being might drive her fever higher. She wanted the comfort of his closeness. They lay down together and Sabine's shaking eased little by little. The throbbing behind her eyes got worse.

"I have to go to sleep," she said apologetically. Sleep was all she could think about.

"Rest easy, love." He kissed the top of her head. "I've got you."

As she drifted back to sleep, the romantic thrill she felt when she heard him call her "love" was almost enough to make her forget she was sick at all.

On the third full day of Sabine's illness, Ezra put a stopwatch to it: she was sleeping roughly eighteen hours a day. Not only that—she was eating almost nothing, drinking only as often as he made her. (Which was fairly often, even if he had to wake her.) She was far too pale, even though a deep flush had settled on her cheeks. Her chest rattled when she breathed. Her eyes were glassy, gaze unfocused.

And that was when she was lucid. Her few bouts of delirium were something else completely.

He could tell when her fever was spiking high because of how she couldn't seem to keep track of when or where she was, and she couldn't look at him without panic showing in her eyes.

"This isn't real," she mumbled frantically on the third evening. She'd insisted earlier in the day on getting out of bed in favor of laying on the sofa. From his chair across the room, Ezra stared hard at her.

"What isn't?"

She sat up, wild-eyed and unsure. "I don't know." She gestured to the space and flicked her gaze briefly to him. She shook her head and spoke with conviction. "But Ezra's gone. He left."

Ezra flinched at the word left. He knew that Sabine wasn't really Sabine at the moment, but the way she said it—it made it sound like he'd made some wanton and careless decision on the Star Destroyer that day. But she was in no state for him to do anything other than placate and agree with her, not when she didn't even realize it was him she was talking to. "Yeah, but he'll be back."

Sabine scoffed, laying down. "Who knows? I don't. And you know what?"

"What?"

"I think Hera thinks I'm naïve for hoping." A pause. "Do you?"

Who the kriff did she think she was having this conversation with? "No," he answered gently. "I think it takes a lot of courage to hope."

"Mm. I don't know." She tossed fitfully, trying to find a comfortable-enough position to lay in. "It was my fault, you know. I mean—not the karking Purrgil. But Ezra going to the Destroyer in the first place. Hera said no, and then I saw him and I could have stopped him. And I didn't."

He hesitated. "Sounds...like you were in a tough spot."

She glared, and then she closed her eyes. "You don't know anything about it."

When she woke some hours later, he could tell in an instant she was herself again. She smiled weakly. "I must be dying for your face to look like that, Ezra."

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. "Do you—remember talking to me earlier?"

She rubbed her forehead. "No. Was I...out of it again?"

"Yeah." He decided not to tell her how she hadn't even recognized him, how she was re-living a time when she believed herself to be completely alone. "You were."

"I'm sorry." She sighed, and her breath caught on the congestion in her chest. Ezra grimaced at the sound and went to the kitchen to get her another glass of water.

"You know the drill," he said when he handed it to her. Her brows quirked.

"You know I'm not actually dying, right?"

She sounded bad, though—the way her voice had been scraped raw by coughing the last few days. Ezra shook his head. "Yeah, but you're not getting a whole lot better, either."

Sabine couldn't argue with that, and she knew it. "I feel...weird today, though. Maybe the fever's about to break."

"Maybe." He glanced at the chrono. "You ready to go back to bed?"

"Yeah, but—" She stopped, gnawing her lip. "I need help getting there." Her eyes were guarded and he could tell that the admission cost her. He nodded, lifting her easily; maybe a little too easily. She felt gaunt in his arms.

"If you're still sick like this tomorrow, we're going straight to the medcenter," he said severely.

She nodded as she settled into bed, and Ezra thought it a bad sign that she didn't try to argue.


The fever did break overnight. Sabine woke around four, sweaty and happy to be sweaty. Her skin felt like skin again and she felt clear-headed for the first time in days, the haze of fever gone. The headache and weakness and congestion lingered, but now that her body-temperature was normalizing, it seemed easier to deal with. Glancing over at sleeping Ezra, she eased out of bed carefully so as not to wake him. Standing up was an experimental thing; her legs wobbled as she walked. Quietly, she grabbed a fresh change of clothes and went to the 'fresher, eager for a cool shower. The task was perhaps a bit too taxing; she ended up having to sit in the shower floor to finish bathing, but the soap and water felt so good she didn't care at all. Once she dried off and got dressed, she felt almost like a brand-new person.

Until she took a hard look in the mirror.

She was surprised and repulsed to see dark, sunken eyes looking back at her. She was too pale and her cheeks were hollow, her nose red and raw from having used so many tissues. Her lips were chapped. She looked too thin. She groaned—had Ezra really seen her like this and worse?

Disgusted and strangely self-conscious, Sabine turned away from the mirror and did her best to sneak back to bed. To her surprise, the bed was empty.

"Ezra?" She called worriedly, voice still no more than a strained squeak. In that moment, she forgot all about her stupid insecurity over how she looked. If Ezra had had a nightmare and she hadn't been there—

The sudden, panicked race of her pulse did nothing to help the rush of dizziness she was feeling—she'd been up too long already. But she needed to make sure he was okay. She forced her legs to carry her to the living area. She saw Ezra in the kitchen and she plopped on the sofa, unspeakably grateful. "You scared me to death," she said sharply, rubbing her temples.

He looked over at her with relief and delight clearly showing on his face. "Uh, yeah, I could say the same."

He joined her on the sofa, handing her another dose of medicine and another glass of water. She rolled her eyes. "We have to quit meeting like this," she mumbled over the rim of the glass.

"No kidding." Tentatively, he reached out and put his hand to her forehead. There was no real difference between the temperature of his skin and hers now. "Thank the Force," he sighed. "You look so much better."

Sabine almost choked on the tablets she was chewing, eyes wide. "Eeew. Have you seen me lately, Ezra?"

"Gorgeous as ever." He grinned and then the expression slipped. "And on your way to healthy again."

Sabine looked at Ezra—really looked at him. He was tired. Had he rested at all while she was sick? He hadn't been far from her; that much she knew. He'd constantly been there to make sure she was drinking adequately, to lay a cool cloth on her forehead, to help her move from place to place. Had he slept? Or just spent his time tied up in knots of anxiety? She recognized the look in his eyes—she'd seen it in her own when they'd been in the thick of dealing with his nightmares.

She set her glass aside and twined their fingers together. "Would you be grossed out if I kissed you right now?"

His mouth twitched as he tried not to laugh. "Not at all."

She leaned forward and touched her lips to his in a chaste kiss; she hardly had the energy for anything else. She cupped his face in her hands when she withdrew. "Thank you for taking care of me," she said softly.

Something strange crossed his face and his brows drew together. "You know I'd never leave." It sounded a lot like a question.

"Ezra." She paused and then was surprised to hear the next words from her mouth spoken in Mando'a. "Mhi me'dinui an."

He shook his head slightly, not understanding.

We share all. That was the translation. But she said, "Of course I know. Of course I know."

Though she was bone-tired, she wound her arms around his neck and held him until she was sure he understood her.