Author's Note: Sorry about the updating lapses. But, I thank everyone who's read and reviewed. All your thoughts are valuable to me. They spur me on. Thanks so much.

"Hold still!"

After jiggling his face, she paused, pursing her lips, treating him as if he had reverted to a two-year-old. In the back of her mind, the thought tapped that he was younger than she.

He trained his eyes on those sensuous lips, spellbound. "I am holding still!" he squeezed through his lips pressed together. What would happen if he suddenly broke his face out of her firm grasp, swept her into his arms, kissing her until she gasped for air?

"No you're not—just like the last time." Sabine smirked, her wiseacre facial expression driving her point home. These twin wounds were deeper, nastier than those sustained a while back. "You're even more fidgety this time around. How do you expect a work of art to grace your face for a while if it turns out all squiggly?" She'd fix his face, her cream would make it as good as new, just like the last time. She'd save his face, again because she could, unthinkable that she wouldn't want to. His cute mug was far too unique to be beat-up, defaced. That adorable face of his, which she had begun to treasure.

She hadn't come right out, telling him that. Not that first time. She hadn't been where she was now, caring about him. Wanting things for him to turn out well.

Ezra settled down, quietly admitting that she was right. Her cream she'd used on him before had worked wonders, having prevented that initial facial wound from scarring. As Sabine worked on his face, carefully applying the sweet-smelling ointment artistically, he took in the sedate elegance of her quarters. He liked being in here with her, grateful to her for her concern and the way she was applying her soothing, miraculous emollient.

"I really liked what you did to the tie-fighter," Ezra gushed, suddenly thinking that he should say something complimentary about her bold creativity. Whether it be with pattern and designs or pulse charges and laying down defensive fire. "You're not gonna believe this, but I overheard one of the bucket-heads say he liked it too." Under his breath, he breathed, "Through the Force."

"Maybe there's hope for some of them yet," Sabine chided, concentrating as she put the finishing touches on the broader of the two wounds. Ezra kept a straight face while watching her fixate on her handiwork with her tongue out as though sensing the air with it.

She's the prettiest girl I've ever known…Ezra couldn't help think; when he dreamed, Sabine was never absent. Does she like me as much as I'm crazy about her?

He thought hard about his feelings, wondering if she might sense them.

Abruptly, Sabine added, "Ahsoka Tano is Fulcrum. How come you didn't know that before she told us?" A mental image of the mysterious hooded Togrutan crowded into Sabine's mind, dwarfing her thoughts. At the same time, Sabine stood back to admire her latest artistic accomplishment before attacking the second wound lying beneath the one superior. "Well? How come?"

"Like I've been training to be a Jedi my whole life," he spluttered. Ezra wanted to get a look at what she'd done so far, but, eyeing the dingy mirror lodged in one of the inset panels in her little room, he held off. With a shrug and sounding resigned, he replied, "I don't know. There's a lot I don't know. Like you can't tell? When I was out cold, lying on the lower platform as Kanan and the Inquisitor fought, the rush of so many voices hummed in my mind. They confused me, until eventually I came around. Got me back to where I saw him break the Inquisitor."

"I only know what you tell me," Sabine crisply admitted, stepping in closer again to tackle the other injury, already lightly scabbed. What Ezra had told her so far only made more questions abound. He'd come a long way, but it was as he truthfully acknowledged. There was still so much he must learn before he could truly be called Jedi.

She embellished his wound with the cream while Ezra pondered over what Tano had uttered about his having a greater destiny. Whatever this "greater destiny" was, he knew that it had to include his new family. He wasn't making a move without them. Certainly not without Sabine, this polished new 'apple of his eye,' first and foremost. He wanted no part of a future that excluded her. Despite Kanan's frequent mentioning that Jedi weren't expected to form attachments, Ezra felt sure that there had to be exceptions to that inflexible rule, belonging to another time. A time bygone and terribly long ago.

He and Hera were certainly attached. Weren't they?

As though she'd read his mind, Sabine broached, "Guess you'll be heading out with Fulcrum to fulfill your greater destiny. The one she says lies before you." She mussed up his hair, a playful gesture, to mask her true feelings. She'd miss him more than she could openly admit. But maybe she needed to be more open. Allow what she felt for Ezra greater leeway. If he knew what she really felt for him, maybe he'd stay. Stay with her and this diversified collection of brave souls and one indispensable feisty droid. The tentative tone of her voice remained. "You owe it to yourself and the resistance to be the biggest, most powerful, most indomitable—"

Ezra silenced Sabine, snagging her hand, coaxing it away from his scalp. Thoughtfully, he considered she'd never played with his hair before. Shock and sorrow mingled on his countenance, his pout gloriously-decorated by the brash rebel who'd stolen his heart down to its cockles. Bringing her hand to his lips, he murmured, "You couldn't drag me away. Not even if Fulcrum ordered I be bound at the ankles to twin-engine landspeeders, tearing me away. Not from you. Never from you." His hammering heart beat harder. "You've got me." Said with such poignancy in his words and on his face.

Trying to sound snide, but failing by a mile, Sabine insinuated, "Meaning, I'm stuck." Her cool composure showed signs of detaching. "W-we're stuck with you." Ezra's eyes lit up, believing that he'd heard how shook she'd sounded.

"It's mutual. I'm stuck on you. Sabine, I admit it. I started out on the wrong foot with you. I know that. But, I'm not the same clueless kid who thought he could impress you by being an annoying brat. That guy's wised up thanks to Hera, Kanan. Yeah, Zeb too. And of course gritty Chopper." His voice dropping, deepening, Ezra confessed, "Thanks to you most of all, Sabine. You are so incredibly amazing. I'll never be able to thank you enough for all you've done."

Suppressing the sudden rush of tears standing in her eyes, Sabine accorded, "I do what I think is right. At least I try to."

"You never miss."

Sabine glanced away from him, seeming suddenly shy. The second wound bore her signature work, and satisfied, she began walking off to clean the bright silkiness from her talented hands. She might have made it to the shelf where she kept her cleansers if it hadn't been for Ezra's mad scramble. Standing in her way, he determined that he'd had enough of beating around the bush.

"All done. Time to clean up." She tried moving around him, averting her eyes from his. Quite certain that if she looked into his eyes too long, she'd fall under their weird spell and his.

He hustled, again placing himself smack in her way. "Sabine, there's something I've got to say before I tell myself I shouldn't say anything."

His serious, more grown-up tone took her by surprise. All at once, this wasn't 'the kid' in her way. This was a man. The very same man who'd unabashedly admitted that he didn't know how to swim. He'd never learned.

And she had taught him…

"What then? What is it?"

The jitters seized him, but his being in the grip of uncertainty was fleeting. "Sabine?"

"Ezra?"

His hand found hers, slightly larger than his, yet finer. Their fingers braided of their own accord it seemed. Tentatively, he drew her to himself; amazingly, she didn't resist. Just like in his many sugarplum dreams. "I. I…" He shut his eyes, unable to find just the right words. Berating himself because he didn't know the ones she deserved to hear. And even if he did, they'd come out wrong. Whom was he kidding? Who was he to think she'd ever feel the same about him as he did for her? He was Ezra Bridger…just another street punk fresh off the streets of Lothal. He was training to be a Jedi, but that didn't change what he'd come from.

He wasn't good enough for her. Never would be. This 'thing' he wanted to be in with her ended now. He let go of her hand, started walking away, hanging his head.

Sabine lunged, pulling his head in so his lips crashed against hers. Her laughter gurgled deep in her throat, delightful to his ears. He fought to breathe. His mind swam the way it did when the Force thrummed through him. The Ghost tilted on its axis when the girl of his dreams whispered against his tongue, "We're in this together. You and me. Don't you ever forget that, K-." She couldn't say it. That wasn't what he was, not anymore. "Ezra, my Jedi lover…"

Dumbstruck, he imprisoned her in his arms, holding her with all his might, despite his hard time with breathing normally. "May the Force be with us."

"The way you're holding me, you're the," Sabine jibed, her tone of voice all too familiar, "Force. Of course, of course. Where would we be without the Force?" Nimbly, with youthful buoyance, she wrestled him to the deck, proving to him that she was a force to be reckoned with in her own right.