time || a Sabine Wren fic||

III

;;;

In the year that goes by, Sabine loses some colors and finds some more.

Atollon has not grown older with the ebb and flow of time. Or perhaps it has, and she doesn't see it. Sabine does not see many things. She misses the way the crawlers hide, and the lights shine and the people here become whole together.

She still finds tiny bits of warmth here and there. Sometimes in the breeze, a song, a whisper, maybe in the hum of Ezra's new lightsaber.

Some things change and some things don't.

The soft crimson still snakes between Kanan and Hera, but it spreads between the rest of them too; it grows darker with the colors of time. Zeb still helps chopper with his bolts and Sabine still tries to paint the colors she'll never really see.

But Ezra is there too, and Sabine finds little pockets of warmth wherever he goes. Sometimes a smile, or a laugh, or a joke. Sometimes it is in the way he does things, the way he walks into a room and everybody smiles, or the way he points out the little things; the colors Sabine misses even though they become the most beautiful of all.

He is tall, as tall as her, perhaps even taller and the colors around him grow darker and more brilliant over time. He catches her eyes from time to time, makes a joke, and laughs for no reason.

He is always that person; the one she sees out of the corner of her eye, the one who is always surrounded by people, children, adults, all the teenagers, because that is the brightness of this boy. That is the expanse of his colors.

But even in his easy grace, he is angry. Sabine will catch it from time to time; that small part of darkness in his ocean of color. He is flawed; so flawed, he is so imperfect. Sabine wonders how the colors of his imperfection could ever be this beautiful.

;;

Kanan Jarrus is tired. He is weary from the wars, memories. He is weary without a world he will never see.

He fights a war, the rebellion does not believe has happened. Alone. Still alone. Maybe forever.

But he is not alone. Hera sits with him, she describes the people, the planet, the sky, the colors he does not see. And as she makes this list of colors, Sabine will add one here and there; she will describe the color of time, the gentle crimsons she does not really understand yet. She describes the ocean that is him, and the sky that is Hera and the tunnels of light that are Zeb. She describes blinding lights in the sky; radiance, rebellion within the rebellion, even though Chopper is entirely droid he is so human.

And she tries to describe Ezra, she searches the colors she has seen, and blends them in together. She finds nothing. There are no words for the boy whose colors have captured so much of Sabine's curiosity.

And maybe, just maybe, for the first time, Kanan sees her colors as well. Maybe he sees her colors the way she does when she is asleep, like those dull flashes that paint themselves across her eyes. Maybe he feels them the way he feels the force, the way he feels every single one of the five hundred people on the planet.

At night she sits over the ghost, watches the colors sneaking over the sands. Sometimes, in the grains that slip through her fingers, she sees closure for a bright moment.

;;

Ezra comes to her a few days before the ambush.

He wants to free Hondo Ohnaka, the traitorous scumbag of a pirate.

"It will be good for the rebellion." He says to her, because Ezra always tells her about all of his plans. He comes to her first, even though he used to go to Kanan before.