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The only reason Sabine was still alive was the sentence written on her arm. It had appeared the day her soulmate was born, just like everyone else who had a soul mark on their skin. It had been completely illegible for a while, and even as it developed with the handwriting of who would say it, it was never the neatest. She never really cared, except when she was trying to decipher the cargo manifests he wrote.
The color of it was always the same, a vibrant indigo, allegedly the color she would grow to associate with them. Her fourteen-year-old self cursed it for not being violet, and did the exact opposite once she was fifteen. The entirety of her twenties was spent praying it wouldn’t turn gray. She knew it shouldn’t, considering they were the last words she would ever hear him say.
I’ll be right behind you. It was a little strange to know the last thing your soulmate would ever say would be a lie. Actually, for a while, she thought it might be the first lie her soulmate would tell her, or even the first thing she’d hear them say. Mandalorians typically got markings related to more brutal things (her parents, for example, had permanent markings from where they first touched, Dad’s on his shoulder and Mother’s on her knuckles), which would point to the last words theory. But then again, she hardly was a typical Mandalorian, so it could have meant anything.
All of those alternative meanings got burned through in the first six months she knew Ezra Bridger, of course. By the time he admitted his birthday (which horrifically coordinated with when her marking appeared), he’d obviously spoken to her and, more importantly, said he didn’t have a crush on her. So that took out the first words and first lie, which practically only left the last words. And Ezra was going to be the one to say them.
She kept it a secret for a long time. There wasn’t a bone in her body that felt anything even close to romantic affection for him, and even platonic affection came and went. She stopped wearing anything sleeveless around the Ghost, switched out the short sleeves on her flightsuit for long ones, and blatantly lied when he asked about soul marks. The only saving grace that first year was that bonds were nearly as likely to be platonic as they were romantic, and she would be lying if it didn’t make sense that her soulmate would be someone she would spend as much time with as they did. All she had to do was wait out his crush and they would allegedly develop the greatest bond she would ever experience.
And…that was exactly what happened. The days they spent painting her TIE, all the missions run together, and every day getting to see that blue on more than just her skin let them grow closer. When the Sith holocron took him away from her, she felt her heart break from his absence. It was then that she accepted that the mark meant something, and that Ezra was her best friend.
It was almost a year later that she finally told him as much.
The night before Ezra and Kanan were supposed to leave Krownest and Sabine, the teens spent nearly the whole night in her room. They had started by playing cards on her floor, then moving to her couch for a movie, and were still there almost an hour after it ended, talking quietly.
“We’re going to have to visit with the Ghost so you can keep adding murals to it,” Ezra spoke, almost quiet enough to be a whisper.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “It’s going to miss the color.”
“We’re all going to miss it.” He looked directly at her, expression soft. “We’re all going to miss you.”
“I’m going to miss you guys too.” She paused for a mere moment of consideration, before adding, “Especially you.”
His eyes widened, before looking away while pink flooded his cheeks. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m serious. You’re my best friend,” she smirked, “of course I’m going to miss you.”
He smiled, though it felt like there was some sort of pain behind it. “You're mine too.”
“And,” she said, throwing all caution to the wind in some late night state of delusion, “you’re my soulmate.”
“I’m–” he frowned. “What?”
“Your soulmark’s a sentence written in dark purple on your left bicep, and it’s been there since you were born, right?” He slowly nodded, and she continued, “Mine too. Except it appeared the same day the Empire rose and is the indigo of your eyes.”
He gaped. “But you said your mark was–”
“I know,” she cut him off. “I said that because I knew it had to match yours. And I was scared to tell you the truth because I knew fourteen-year-old you would have tried to kiss me on the spot.”
“I would have asked,” he winced, “probably. But why didn’t you tell me before now?”
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “There just wasn’t a good time until now, I guess.”
“And what made this a good time?”
“I…wanted to make sure you knew you’d see me again.” Upon his confusion, she supplemented, “The sentences are the last things we’ll say to each other.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Oh! So that’s what it means!”
“What did you think it meant?”
“I had no clue.” He shrugged. “‘May the Force be with you’ can kind of mean anything when you’re a Jedi.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded. “Mine says ‘I’ll be right behind you’, so it was a little easier to deduce.”
Ezra nodded, and thought for a moment. “I guess that means we’ll know when we’re saying goodbye forever.”
“Yeah,” she leaned against him, feeling a strange urge to be as physically close to him as she could. “I guess that’s almost a gift.”
When she flew herself, Ezra and Hera away from the flames and back to the rebels’ makeshift base, a part of her thought that they weren’t the one who that gift would have been best for. Maybe Kanan knew through the Force what was going to transpire, but all Hera got was a grayed out name on her wrist after he was already gone. Sabine processed her grief apart from Ezra, and he did the same, but when the time came to retire to their tents, she quietly joined him in his. They fell asleep with tears on each other’s clothes, and awoke with their faces nearly pressed against one another. Some foreign part of her wanted to close that gap.
Fear suddenly took hold in her chest, as she was confronted with the reality that they could lose each other just as quickly as Kanan and Hera did. Worse, Ezra was acting distant and resigned, all too similar to how his master behaved while their captain was captured. Sabine asked him about it when he was meditating, when she couldn’t say that she loved him back, and when they were flying into the city. He brushed it off every time, saying something out counting on each other. She didn’t ask him when she let him sneak away into the vents, but if that was because she was scared that he wouldn’t give her an answer or that he would was unknown.
Every moment was spent in baited breath just waiting for him to say the words. For him to confirm that they would never see each other again; that it was over. For her to have to find it in herself to say those six words back.
Instead, he said them before vanishing into hyperspace. Her words stayed mercifully unsaid, and remained their brilliant blue long after the eyes it matched had vanished from her life. It wasn’t until the whole crew watched his message, and later when she watched the one made just for her, that it all felt real. He was gone, but not forever.
As the years went on, she watched that holo more times than she could count. It was a greater comfort than living in his tower, but was dwarfed by the script on her skin. When she would awake from nightmares that told her he was gone, she would frantically roll up her sleeve and just stare at the stubborn indigo. It was a promise that he was still out there, but even more that they would see each other again.
It drew her back to reality every time she wanted to remove herself from it forever. It guided her in the search to find him, and motivated the New Republic to barely allow Hera to assist in the task. It was the only thing she could think of when holding the map, knowing her decision before it was even made.
And then, she found him. It didn't take long for them to head inside his pod, and even less for their mouths to crash into one another. Ezra removed her flight suit with reverence, fingers dancing over her making as he went. A smile crossed his lips as she laid a hand over the fabric she knew covered the matching marking.
“It helped keep me going,” he shared in a voice that she still didn’t quite think of as his. “Every time I looked at it, it was like you were saying it to me.”
“Me too,” she admitted while sliding off the last of his layers, taking in every part of him being with her again, purple script included. “It was the only way I knew you were still alive. I…don’t know what I would have done if I thought you were really gone,” she lied, knowing exactly what she had contemplated in his absence. And what she did do because of that knowledge.
“Well, I don’t plan on saying those words for a long time,” he said before recapturing her lips with his.
In the end, he was right. He didn’t say them when she was left behind on Perdia, nor when they were battling Thrawn. It was long after they had returned to the comm tower and started their new life together.
The temple was under attack, the rogue apprentice of Luke’s tearing through what students Sabine and her riduur couldn’t get out. They had finally reached the tunnels with spectres five through ten in tow, plus a half dozen others, when more screaming could be heard.
Ezra instantly turned towards the noise, placing his daughter down before looking to his wife. “I’ll be right behind you.”
They both recognized the words instantly, and it wasn’t a question what they meant. A tear pooled at his indigo eyes and her chest ached. It was the last time she’d ever see him, and he wasn’t stopping it. Neither would she.
Instead, she said the only thing that made sense. The only thing that would have ever made sense.
“May the Force be with you, Cyar’ika.”