A/N: Switching gears and trying something different tonight; hope you don't mind. Just a little piece of nothing, set in my headcanon/AU where the crew spent more than two and a half seconds together on Yavin base. This was a challenge. I'd love to know whether you think I got in Sabine's head well enough, or if this even fits with her. Let me know, either yay or nay!

Subtleties

He'd been watching her a lot lately. Not in a creepy stalker way; just quietly observing, taking note of the hundred tiny ways she'd changed since the darksaber, since going home to Krownest, since helping her people break free of Saxon's terror.

She was softer, somehow. Which seemed like a strange way of putting it considering he had a hell of a bruise across his side, earned from thinking he could best her at hand-to-hand. (Again.) No—Sabine was as fierce a warrior as ever. But he noticed her smiles were freer, her eyes less guarded, her laughs more frequent than they had ever been, and all this in the middle of building a rebellion. Ezra was curious about the new lightness around her shoulders, and he told her so—

In a roundabout way, of course.

"You haven't changed your hair in a while," he said one afternoon. They were atop the Ghost's hull, him scrubbing off carbon scoring and her adding new TIE silhouettes; kill-marks which Hera said she found distasteful, but everyone knew she was secretly thrilled by.

"Ezra." Sabine's answering sigh was disparaging, and her nose scrunched. "I dyed it last week."

"No, yeah, I know that." He swallowed a spike of panic—he most certainly did not know that. "But the same color, though."

He prayed to every power in the galaxy that was true.

Her eyes narrowed because she knew he was full of it, but she had no empirical proof. "It's been this way for months."

He nodded emphatically. "That's what I'm saying."

She set her paint gun down and turned to actually look at him. "Are you asking why I'm keeping one solid color now or what?"

"Yes, that."

"Well," she prompted wryly, "spit it out."

He rolled his eyes. "How come you quit putting the different colors in your hair?"

For a second, he thought she was going to mess with him again, but her mouth turned thoughtful and she sat back on her heels, regarding him. "I haven't really thought about it, I guess." She brushed her fringe of bangs off her forehead. "I like this color, for one."

"It's nice," he agreed. He thought the deep, dusky purple she favored these days was incredibly becoming, but he didn't quite know how to tell her.

"Thanks." She smiled, tucking her hair behind her ear self-consciously. "And I guess it's just easier; I blend in better in a crowd than when I had it pink or blue or whatever. The Empire's not looking for me like this."

Ezra hummed. "You've never been concerned about laying low from the Empire before," he said. "I'm pretty sure they have an academy class dedicated to studying your explosives techniques by now."

Sabine grinned wickedly. "As they should." She turned her attention back to the TIE she'd just finished painting and carefully lifted the stencil away, swabbing her fingertip at some imaginary smudge. "My natural hair color is the same as my brother's," she said after a brief silence.

Ezra looked up from the charred streak he was trying to get off the Ghost. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." She laid the stencil over a blank space and pressed the tape down. "The first time I colored it was after the academy and…everything. I don't really know what made me want to, to tell you the truth," she said. "I mean, I've always been in love with color and art, but…" She trailed off, thinking. She pulled the trigger on the paint gun and worked it back and forth until the gentle spray evenly coated the stencil. The wind had blown a few leaves from nearby trees onto the Ghost and Sabine grabbed one, pressing its veiny surface in the still-wet paint. It left a haphazard pattern, setting it apart from the other TIEs on the hull. "There was no individuality at the academy," she explained. "Coloring my hair was the first and fastest 'kriff-you' gesture I could think of."

"You mean aside from defecting." Ezra's lips twitched as he fought off a grin.

"Aside from defecting," she amended drily. "Idiot."

"So why'd you keep it colored, though?" Ezra went back to cleaning, doing his best to look only casually interested in case she didn't really want to talk about it.

"It was fun," she said with a shrug. "Cathartic, too, in a way. I felt like I needed it, to help me figure out who I was—to get comfortable with the Sabine who left her family and the Empire."

He nodded. "And now?"

"Now?" She echoed. "Hm." She set her paint gun aside and sat with her back against the gun turret, stretching out with her legs crossed at the ankles. She tilted her face toward the sun and squinted in its light. "It still keeps me awake some nights," she admitted softly. It referred to The Duchess, Ezra knew. "But less and less all the time," she continued. She turned her head to look at him, the late-afternoon glow highlighting green flecks in her eyes. "I'm good with who I am."

"You should be." The sudden, fervent note in his voice took them both by surprise. Ezra glanced at her, feeling a pink flush creep up his neck. An identical blush stained Sabine's cheeks and for half a second, Ezra saw in her eyes the possibility that maybe someday—

But not today, and that was fine.

The spellbound silence between them was broken by Zeb hollering their names from halfway across the base, calling them into a mission briefing. They gathered up their things and climbed down from the Ghost, comfortably in step with each other.

"By the way," Sabine said, voice haughtily teasing, "flattery doesn't excuse you from failing to notice my hair is a different color than before I dyed last week."

Ezra all but choked on his tongue, whipping his head around to stare at her in consternated disbelief. "It is not!"

"Is too; I bought the dye half a shade darker."

"Half a—" He rolled his eyes hard. "Yeah, my bad for not picking up on that very dramatic change."

"Subtleties are everything, Ezra. Any woman can tell you." She locked eyes with him meaningfully.

He opened his mouth to retort, but he realized then that their shoulders were brushing, hands touching occasionally as they walked. The contact was so subtle, so natural that he hadn't noticed before; now he was noticing that she hadn't pulled away. He grinned. "Yeah, whatever."