Sabine was acting all variations of crazy lately, it felt as if he hardly knew her. The tough Mandalorian, whom he deeply loved, had become this puzzling stranger, who was driving him nuts. Take for instance right now. Was she a whispering zephyr from going totally rogue? The thought rattled the Lothal youth. Dangerously close to it she was, Ezra judged, being as headstrong as was her habit. Kanan had made it perfectly clear that he was going to Concord Dawn all by himself.

True, they were a team, but sometimes, out of necessity, a team had to divide to conquer.

Well, Kanan was going solo, except for Chopper; the mechanized complainer yammered its head off about having to go. Despite his being a non-sentient, he hated being coerced. He'd slammed one of his worn wands into Ezra's shins, and had spewed some very impolite references to their mothers in caustic binary. Like it was his big idea to have the droid fly off into certain danger. Ezra wanted to go, but one look from Kanan had nixed that idea. The abuse the teen suffered at the whims of the cantankerous machine mounted day-by-day. This droid was getting too big for his couplings.

Now-this! Sabine, having this impossible plan of smuggling herself aboard the Phantom. Ezra admired her typical courage, but maligned her lack of wisdom and her firebrand tendencies. When Kanan finds out, he'll blow his top, Ezra couldn't help thinking as he stood with his girl, trying to talk her out of deliberately disobeying Kanan to place herself alongside him, in harm's way. True to form, Sabine was all for using force, the good old sense of the word, to drive the Protectors away from the planet. Kanan held the opinion that forming an alliance with the elite group of Mandalorian warriors was the way to go. His mission was one of recruitment; the Mandalorians needed to join the Rebellion. An idea which shouldn't have irritated Sabine, but did. Not all Mandalorians could be trusted.

Shaking his head, Ezra regarded her, as she prepared to depart, in the anteroom right before the approach to the smaller ship. Stumped, he was coming up empty, having run out of convincing arguments so she'd change her mind. A mind that she had resiliently made up, her course of action set in stone. Finding it hard to shake how gorgeous she was when she went into assault mode, he sighed. Her entire body language shouted how determined she was to show those Mandalorian renegades just what a member of Clan Wren, House of Vizsla was made of. Few women he knew would compel themselves to sneak onto their base, plant explosives to blow up their fighters.

"Sabine..."

She wasn't entirely dismissive of his hangdog bearing. Sighing softly too then, she initiated, "Look..."

Oh, he was, looking long and hard at her, more than a little surprised that she had let him in on her plan. She had been acting, aside from her other weirdness, very distant and cold to him. For the life of him, he couldn't understand why. Ever since their networking with the Princess, he had noticed a subtle difference in Sabine towards him, which made all the difference to him. And now, she had this score to settle with the snakes who had nearly murdered Hera. She was out for vengeance, opposed to anything that even hinted there be diplomacy. Just the mention of Fenn Rau's name elicited her ire.

"I just wanted to say..." He searched her face, which wore its impatience none too well.

"May the Force be with us. Yeah, yeah. Y'know, granted. Kanan means well, trying to keep Jedi philosophy alive in spite of their near extinction. But, more often than not, ruthless people need to learn a huge lesson, one that's never forgotten, when they go too far. It serves as a warning. I'm doing this for Hera!" With a stamp of her foot, that was that, in how she saw things. "You of all people should know that." Even if it wasn't the time, nor place to go there, Sabine did. "After what happened to your parents."

His spate of strong emotions made his delivery unsteady. "Yes, I know. You bet I know. It's what makes me committed to see this whole Rebel thing through. All I'm trying to say is...well, I..." Her striking eyes, vibrating with verve and intensity, had him gasping as he strained for coherence. "I-"

"You want to come along too?" That knowing look in her eyes was a challenge, one he knew he must back down from. This family already had one reckless teen; it didn't need two right now, if ever.

He had promised himself that he would, going forward, heed Kanan more than when he'd begun his training. Her stubborn foolhardiness put him to the test.

"I was going to say, please-be very careful. Don't do anything that gets you killed, okay? Fighting this fight without you wouldn't be the same. I want you coming back to me so we can continue this fight together. The way it's supposed to be."

Touched, more than her words might have conveyed, Sabine, forgetting about, what she called his infatuation with Leia, closed in on Ezra to lightly finger his mildly-scarred face. She felt partly responsible for the scars not fading completely as she had promised they would. Unfortunately, her salve she highly touted to work wonders had its limitations. Maybe if the wounds hadn't been so deep no marks would have been left. Lazily, her impish smile touched his heart and his lips scrunched to one side when she pulled him into her arms. The intensity of her goo-goo eyes made him dizzy, making his own shine.

"All right," Sabine cajoled. "Just 'this fight' is all you want to continue?"

He smoldered in her fond, unyielding embrace and struggled to say, without stumbling over his tongue, which felt two-sizes too big, "So, we're okay?"

"Why wouldn't we be?" She probed him with scrutinizing eyes. I'm here, have been all along, for you, for all of us, Sabine internalized, squeezing him tighter. The Princess isn't here; I am. Will be, as long as you want me, she vowed.

"Just asking 'cause...well, you've been acting kind of like." Ezra fidgeted, looking as if he sat on pins and needles. "Like, uh...weird."

"Weird? Me? Me, weird?" Sabine squeaked, at a loss. What did he mean by weird? "What makes you say that?" He stopped just short of clearly spelling it out. He sensed Kanan's approach was imminent. Each solid, hurried footfall brought him nearer to the shuttle bay where the lovebirds communed. If Sabine didn't make a move quickly, she wouldn't be going along for the clandestine ride. "When I get back, you'd better explain what you mean by me being weird. Now, it's stashing myself in the crawlspace time. Gotta go." On pure impulse, she twined her arms about his neck and planted one swift kiss on Ezra's open mouth as he gasped in complete surprise.

"Watch yourself," he ordered, his voice an octave higher, halfway inside her titillating mouth, which bore a gentle essence of cinnamyrrh. Delightful, Ezra thought, loath to surrender her, and dreading what her absence meant for him. Time spent worrying and agonizing, pure torture.

"I will," she promised, pecking him on the cheek before she took off.

Long before Kanan, armed with his lightsaber and his resolve to make new friends, reached the Phantom, Sabine had herself tucked into the cramped covert, and Ezra had raced his way back to the command ship intent on observing the attack shuttle disappear into the vast, star-studded darkness of space.

As the Phantom went into lightspeed, Ezra smoothly whispered, "May the Force be with you always, my love."