Chapter Text
Sabine was, in a lot of ways, a pretty typical Mandalorian. She spoke the language. She honored her family–her truer family, not her blood-family, because family to a Mandalorian warrior was those you fought and died with, not the people that gave birth to you–and her Clan. She wore the armor.
She rarely took off the armor, even, and even more rarely the bodysuit. Ezra assumed she probably had several different pairs, but truth be told, nobody really knew (except for maybe Hera, but she wasn’t talking).
All of this combined meant when Ezra found her on top of the Great Temple, standing in front of an easel with her bodysuit tied around her waist, he didn’t really know what he expected–but whatever it was certainly wasn’t what he saw.
Sabine was covered in scar tissue and tattoo ink. Her bodysuit was tied around her waist, so from the hips up she was bare-skinned save for a white sports bra, and just about every inch of visible skin either had tattoos or scars covering it. Two white lines ran parallel down from her left shoulder to the inside of her elbow. A bad burn sat on her abdomen. An ice tiger prowled up her waist, partially obscured by the bodysuit. Flowers–were they cherry blossoms?–covered her right shoulder. On her back, wings sprouted from her shoulderblades, running all the way down to the small of her back, interrupted only by a long gash that ran horizontally across her back, about halfway up. Several more scars that presumably had already been present had been inked over; a trio of cuts near her shoulderblade disappeared underneath the feathers of the wing.
Ezra stepped in front of her, making sure she saw him so he wouldn’t startle her and mess up her art. “Hey, Sabine.”
“Hey, Ezra,” Sabine replied. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Just wanted to talk.” Ezra shrugged. “I didn’t know you were so… scarred.”
“On Mandalore, that’d be a compliment,” Sabine responded dryly.
Ezra hummed a little laugh. “Yeah. Guess it would be.”
The paint applicator hissed as Sabine added a band of red to her canvas. In the distance, a flock of birds took flight from the trees.
“I’m kind of wondering how you got so many,” Ezra said.
“Years of practice.” Sabine smiled a little, and tapped one–a long slice on her forearm. “Ganger with a knife. I forgot that I wasn’t wearing vambraces.”
“You remember that?”
“I never forget a scar. Points of pride, and all that.”
“Wow,” Ezra replied. “What’s that one from?”
“This one?” Sabine asked, pointing to a rash of burnt skin on her waist. Ezra nodded. “Sniper got a little too close to shooting me."
Ezra made an 'oh' face. Sabine continued. "Not as bad as the one under the orchid. Someone supercharged a stolen E-WEB and shot my pauldron. Heated it up so much it burnt the skin underneath.” She tapped the flowers on her right shoulder, so Ezra looked closer–and yep, there was a scarred-over burn there, hidden beneath the ink.
“They look…” Hot. Sexy. Pretty. “...cool.”
“Thank you,” Sabine replied, decidedly ignoring that cool clearly wasn’t the word Ezra wanted to use.
For just a moment, a comfortable silence settled over the two.
“...have you got any?” Sabine asked, eventually. Ezra thought for a moment.
“I… don’t know. Don’t remember any.” He shrugged. “I have a few bruises from training sabers? Does that count?”
“I say it does.” Sabine clipped her paint applicator onto her belt and studied the canvas with a critical eye. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. They’re not as permanent as scars.”
It took Ezra a moment to realize Sabine was staring at him like he was doing a handstand in midair.
“What?”
“Of the painting , di’kut.”
“ Oh! Wow, I… yeah. Force above. Uh…” Ezra took a half-step back to look over the canvas. It was good–really good. A near-perfect replica of the setting Yavin sun. He said as much to Sabine.
“You’re impossible,” Sabine muttered, shaking her head.
“What?”
“ Near-perfect replica? Ez–it’s art , not a replica . It’s not meant to be perfect. It’s meant to express something, to convey feeling, to–to describe things that you won’t or can’t describe with words.”
“Some art can be a replica of something!”
“ Gar’re eyn di’kut , Ezra Bridger.”
“I know enough Mando’a to know what that means.”
“Good! Then you know what I think of you right now!” Sabine shook her head. “Stars above, Ez.”
“Usually where they are, yeah.”
Sabine shot him a withering glare. Ezra crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.
“You can’t say I’m wrong,” he pointed out. Sabine punched him in the shoulder, hard enough to make her displeasure known but not hard enough to harm.
“ Di’kut. ”
“Owwww,” Ezra moaned dramatically. “That’s gonna leave a mark, Bine.”
“Maybe you’ll remember this talk, then,” Sabine replied, without an ounce of venom in her voice. “I have got to teach you the finer points of art sometime.”
“Maybe you can give me a tattoo to remember the lesson by,” Ezra suggested. Sabine paused at that.
“...that’s… not a bad idea, actually,” she replied. “Tattoos hold… not the same, uh, niche, in my culture, but the idea is similar. Permanent reminder, and whatnot.”
“Is that why you have so many?” Ezra asked.
“...sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Sort of. It’s… complicated.” Sabine sighed and motioned to the edge of the great stone step they were standing on. “C’mon.”
Ezra nodded and followed her to the edge. They sat.
“You know how the Empire is about individuality and self-expression and all that. After I escaped Skystrike, I wanted to… show off that I was free. Break some regulations. That’s why I got the wings.”
“To fly free,” Ezra thought aloud.
“So you can recognize symbolism.”
“When it’s blindingly obvious, yeah.”
“We’ll have to get you a real obvious tattoo, then.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Starbird, probably, on your shoulder. I’ll even stylize it for you. Make sure everyone knows you’re mine.”
Sabine realized what she’d said a moment after she said it.
“I mean–”
“Yours, huh?” Ezra gave her an easy grin and a look –that insufferable look that he only gave her when he caught her screwing up and could score some easy verbal sparring points.
“I-in a metaphorical way. Like you’re one of my squad, my crew, my clan, that sort of thing,” Sabine half-stammered.
“Sabine.” Ezra’s face suddenly got very serious. “Are you saying you want me in Clan Wren?”
“That’s not what I said!” Sabine protested, as Ezra dropped the dour facade.
“I can hear the wedding bells already!” Ezra laughed. “Ezra Wren has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“Ezra, I’m going to kill you,” Sabine vowed.
“Ezra and Sabine, sitting in a tree,” he hummed, with the widest smile on his face.
“Oh, fek off,” Sabine groaned, burying her face in her hands. “I get enough of that from my friends. I don’t need you joining in.”
“Fine, fine. I’ll stop.” Ezra put a hand on her shoulder. “If it’s worth anything, my friends tease me about you all the time, too.”
“I don’t get why. We’re just friends.” Sabine instinctively repressed the little bit of sadness that she felt saying that.
Ezra shrugged. “People say things. Sometimes they’re true. Sometimes not.”
“And sometimes it doesn’t make any sense, but they say it anyway.” Sabine sighed. “I hate rumors.”
“I’m sure they hate you too,” Ezra replied, patting her thigh. She winced.
Ezra noticed.
“You okay?” he asked, once again getting very serious, very quickly. Sabine nodded.
“I’m fine. Cut myself on some razor wires during that heist we pulled,” Sabine explained.
“You didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t even notice. Besides, I was better off that you. You got shot. ”
“I barely even got grazed,” Ezra countered. Sabine rolled her eyes.
“Ezra, I know what a graze looks like, and taking a blaster bolt to the thigh is not a graze. ”
Not to mention how awkward it was to patch up afterwards–especially with all that fabric fused to his skin.
“And taking a longblaster round to the gut isn’t one, either, but that’s what you called it.”
“What, the one right here?” Sabine asked, pointing to the not-quite-properly-healed burn she’d pointed out earlier. Ezra nodded.
“Sabine, I don’t know if you remember this, but I was there for that. You were put on bed rest for a full week afterwards.”
“It was three days.”
“No, you just refused to stay on bed rest for more than three days. Which made sense, but still.”
“Whatever. It wasn’t that bad, anyway.”
“I remember the doctor saying something about it being possible to die from and highly susceptible to infection , actually.”
“No, you don’t. Lies and slander.”
“I do too.”
Sabine rolled her eyes. “Hey, don’t you have lightsabre practice to attend, instead of bothering me?”
“Nope,” Ezra grinned. “That’s in the afternoon. It’s barely even ten-hundred hours. I can keep this up at least until noonmeal.”
“I am going to kill you.”