time || a Sabine Wren fic||

II

;;;

Ahsoka Tano belongs to the universe.

She watches things the way Sabine does; the sky, the grass, the emptiness; she sees the colors Sabine feels. She understands the whispers of the stars, she hears the songs Sabine does not catch.

Around her lingers the colors of Sadness, cocooning her against the harsh reality that is war, even though perhaps, her reality is worse. Ahsoka lives in times that do not exist, she lives in the past, in all the memories, she is born in her nostalgia. She watches the colors of time for after-war, she paints her sky in shades of hope.

Ahsoka Tano drifts along the plain that is the world; unbound, untethered. She's a shadow of what is, what could be, and the colors bend away from her wherever she goes, wherever she becomes.

;;

Minister Tua wants their help, and Sabine wants to say no. Her paintings are more vivid now; darker, deeper, and far too full of death. Sabine keeps them to herself, even though Hera sees the red stormtroopers painted into the wall and Kanan comes into her room from time to time. It's different.

Sabine lets herself watch crimson paint, she lets herself watch things that the old Sabine would have turned away from.

Afterall, who does not darken with the onslaught of time?

They go to Lothal anyway; Ezra wants to, Ahsoka wants to, Sato wants to. Sabine lets herself sink into the silence.

;;

At the rendezvous there are so many Stormtroopers.

Their armor shines and the white blinds Sabine's eyes. She imagines them in red; as pools of blood form from wounds that will never heal.

And the satisfaction expands in Sabine's chest. It expands until the small infinitesimal point of dark spreads across her body, like warmth that is actually cold.

It recedes after time.

Why do colors of silence change every time she looks away?

;;

He belongs to the shadows.

He watches them; and Sabine watches him. She watches the black of his mask, she watches the durasteel that plates his body the way her beskar does. She watches as life-support systems breathe for him, as they pump his blood, as they bring life to something that should be dead.

And she wonders what creature could be underneath. She wonders if, maybe, just maybe, before he became this- machine, he was alive. If he laughed the way she does, and cared the way Hera does, and buried his smallest flaws. She wonders what colors would have surrounded him then. If maybe they were brighter; like shades of blue and green and the sky. She wonders if he has ever stopped to see the stars and closed his eyes to feel the sunlight.

And she watches his colors now; the black for every person he has killed, the hatred that becomes his blood, and the freedom that will never really be freedom. Then the greys that are painted over his lungs, his words, that make him wonder if he really has found his way now or if he has lost it even more.

The abyss in his chest completes this spectrum of grey. It pulls his mind to his heart, it makes him believe in something that does not really exist, it gives him hope in the dark. Which is perhaps what he searches for the most, what they all search for the most.

And then something.

A spark of soft crimson in the black black folds of his heart.

Perhaps the colors of mustafar belong to him.