Happy Hiatus Hump Day! This one doesn't have Ezra in it, but he is talked about. I don't ship it, but if you squint and tilt your head slightly, there might be traces of Ezrabine. However, it can also be seen as space family love. This oneshot is centered and Kanan and Sabine and their father daughter relationship. This is also me making a feeble attempt to write Sabine in character. Enjoy.
Summary: Sabine paints, but she notices things have changed since Kanan and Ezra returned. Takes place one week after the end of the finale.
Sabine was never the social type. Even before she joined the Imperial Academy, she spent hours holed up in her room with her face in her sketchbook. Now, she had a perfectly good reason behind her lack of social qualities.
After she ran away, she became a bounty hunter with her best friend and partner, Ketsu Onyo. After Ketsu...left, Sabine built up a wall. When Hera found her and took her in, those walls began to slowly fall, the key word being slowly.
Even though she and Ketsu had settled their differences and Sabine now had a new family, those walls were still crumbling.
That meant more time in her room, adorning the walls with her various paintings.
As the Mando girl finished her latest picture of Kanan, with his eyes of course, she turned to the drawing she finished shortly after Kanan and Ezra returned from Malachor, a picture of fireworks adorning a night sky. Every color was there but one. Upon inspecting it, Sabine raised a teal eyebrow. She turned to another painting, one of her usual stormtroopers with a bright red circle and a slash. She found a similar picture that she drew after the two Jedi returned. They were the same except the recent one had a pink slash over it.
Then it hit her.
After Malachor, there was no red.
It must have been a subconscious decision, one knowingly made in the back of Sabine's head without her knowledge.
Perhaps it brought back some bad memories from the past. Red reminded her of the Sith Holocron that destroyed Ezra. Red reminded her of the so called former Sith Lord that was described to her by Kanan when he explained what had happened. Red reminded her of the Inquisitors, of Vader.
Red would not be welcome for a while.
Perhaps someday, Ezra would be talking, laughing again. Heck, seeing the kid smile again would bring her to tears. But Ezra was changed. The color red had changed him, and Sabine hated it.
She wanted Ezra to flirt with her, even though he rarely did that after a while. She wanted him to comment on her drawings, with his eyes darting back and forth nervously. She wanted her little brother back.
Before Ezra, Sabine did not know what she was missing. With Ezra, she was introduced to a brighter world, a brighter spectrum of colors. Suddenly, her world was changed. Kanan came back blind. Ahsoka did not come back at all. Worst of all, Ezra came back a shell of the boy she grew to love. Sabine had greeted a side of the kid that she never wanted to see, an unwelcome spectrum.
Pushing the thoughts away, Sabine set her paint canisters aside and stepped out of her room and towards the fresher, where she scrubbed the excess paint off of her hands. As she left, she nearly ran into Kanan. She muttered an apology before turning towards the common room.
"Everything alright?" Kanan called.
"I'm fine," Sabine mumbled. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes when Kanan followed her to the common room. They sat down and Kanan reached carefully for Sabine's hand, squeezing it in reassurance. "Spill it."
Sabine sighed, her eyes beginning to burn. "I just want things to go back to the way they were before you and Ezra left."
"Me too," Kanan replied. "My eyes are gone, Ahsoka's gone, Ezra's..." His voice trailed off.
"Ezra's gone too..." Sabine muttered. "The Ezra we know anyway. I miss him. I miss his voice, his smile..." Sabine bit her tongue, and her eyes teared up upon realizing that Kanan would never see his padawan smile again. "I'm sorry..." she muttered quickly. "I-"
"You mean Ezra hasn't smiled?" Kanan cut off. "Not once?"
Sabine closed her eyes. "Not once. He's not speaking, he's barely even acknowledging us. It's like he's here physically but..."
"A part of him is still on Malachor," Kanan finished.
Sabine hummed in agreement, her lip trembling.
"Sabine," Kanan began, "Ezra's a tough kid. What happened on Malachor, it was bad enough to shake him up. He may never be the same again, but we can at least try to bring him home." Kanan wrapped an arm around Sabine and he felt the girl lean into him slightly, her body trembling with suppressed sobs. Kanan held her for a moment, letting her cry into his shoulder. After a few minutes, Kanan spoke. "Why don't you describe one of your paintings to me?"
Sabine let out a chuckle despire herself and wiped her eyes. "Now you're speaking my language," she answered, her voice shaky from crying. She described her paintings, every detail, every color.
Kanan smiled, trying to picture these paintings in his head. Thanks to the detailed descriptions provided to him, he could. As Sabine went on, Kanan noticed one missing color.
"No red?"
Sabine winced. She was hoping Kanan wouldn't catch that detail. "I... Red just doesn't feel right after what happened. Maybe someday I'll use it again but now..."
"That's understandable," Kanan replied. "We all need to recover in some way."
Sabine hummed in agreement once again. "Until then, there are always other colors out there."
"There's that positivity I missed," Kanan chuckled.
Red was an unwelcome spectrum, yet the ban was only temporary. The holocron, the sabers, the Empire. Red was too much at the moment. Someday, red would be welcomed back into Sabine's paintings. It would be a slow process, but it would be worth it. Just like her walls. Just like what it would take to get the little brother she never wanted back.
*casually doesn't mention that red is one of my favorite colors* I hope I wrote Sabine in character. She and Kanan are probably the two hardest characters to write, even before the finale. Don't forget to leave suggestions and love down below and make sure you check out my poll! As always, until next time!