Chapter Text
Hera was waiting for them when Zeb and Sabine arrived. She nodded at them. “I’m glad to see you both back safely,” she said. “I trust your mission went well?”
Sabine felt the corner of her mouth twitch. “It was... interesting,” she settled on. “We already reported to Sato on the way here, but I can share the highlights if you want.”
“Highlights,” Zeb repeated. “You blew up a tree while I was still in it!”
“I already said I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there; besides, you weren’t hurt, and it got the alligator-wolves out of the way.”
“I thought we were calling them wolfigators?”
“I’m sure this will be a fascinating story,” Hera said, “and I look forward to hearing it, but later. There’s a family meeting scheduled for as soon as you two were back, in the lounge, and it’s important.”
“What’s it about?” Sabine carelessly asked, as they started towards the Ghost.
“You’ll find out there.”
“Not even a hint?” Sabine remembered meeting to hear that they were low on supplies, to plan out future missions or surprise parties, or when the “meeting” had turned out to be a surprise party. She was expecting a smile, or a frown, or a whispered explanation.
She was not expecting the complete lack of expression on Hera’s face, and in her voice.
“You’ll find out at the meeting. Come along.”
Zeb stopped walking and crossed his arms. “No,” he said. “I’m not going any farther, not until you tell us what’s wrong. This isn’t like you. Are you under duress or something?”
Hera turned, blinked, and her mouth partially opened in surprise. Obviously that was not the case. She recovered, and gave a quick smile. “No, that isn’t something you have to worry about here,” she said, and subtly twitched her lekku in the all-clear signal they had established.
“Then why can’t you tell us?”
She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, her face was back to a studied neutral expression. “It really isn’t my place to talk about it. You’ll understand later.”
Sabine and Zeb exchanged glances. There was no chance it could be anything pleasant, even if it wasn’t dangerous. Neither of them voiced their worries, but she could see the direction of his thoughts in how his ears twitched, and hers had to be just as apparent to him.
They followed her. There was nothing else to do, not at the moment.
Once back on the ship, Hera went straight to the lounge while Sabine brought her pack to her own quarters, and Zeb presumably did the same. She was apprehensive, and anxious to find out what it was and get it over with, but very few situations were made better by carrying unnecessary baggage. She forced her worries to the back of her mind and put everything back where it belonged. Depending on how bad it was, she might not be able to, afterwards.
“We’re here,” she heard Zeb say as she entered the room where they were meeting. “Care to tell us what the big surprise is?”
Everyone was there. Good. Surely they would have been told if someone had died, and Hera would have been a lot more visibly upset, but still.
“So,” she said with forced cheer, “who’s dying?” There was no way it could be that bad. Right?
“Nobody,” Kanan answered, “not to the best of my knowledge.” She relaxed, slightly. Whatever it was, they could probably deal with it.... “Unless someone else is hiding something.”
Zeb looked at her. She looked at him, then looked around. Hera was very steadily keeping her gaze on the two of them, and very definitely not looking at anything else. Kanan, well, he couldn’t really look at anyone, but she saw that his hand was on Ezra’s shoulder. Ezra was quite intently studying his fingernails. Despite wearing gloves.
She honed in on him. “Ezra. What is it?”
He glanced up at her, then quickly looked back down.
“What’s wrong?”
Kanan leaned in closer to him. “It’s okay,” he murmured.
Ezra suddenly gave a wide grin. “How did your mission go?” he brightly asked.
“It went well, but that’s not the issue here,” Zeb growled; he was worried, not angry.
“Things have been okay here... nothing much really happened, just the usual, Chopper being a pain as always, Hera getting on my case about cleaning the ship....”
Hera made a strangled noise of protest, facepalmed, and sighed.
That was when Sabine noticed what she didn’t hear: Chopper. The droid was being unusually silent. She glanced over – yes, he was there, and not powered down. Normally he would have been chattering, especially after such a slight against him, but he was quiet. Subdued. Almost like when....
Zeb had caught onto that as well, and his ears dropped. “It’s bad, isn’t it,” he said.
Ezra looked away. “It’s... it’s not that bad,” he said, and tried to force a smile. “Hey, did I ever tell you guys the one about the stormtrooper, the TIE pilot, and the farmer? So they walk into a bar, and –”
“Yes, you have. Five times,” Sabine forcefully stated; and all of those times had been when he was trying to avoid talking about something, which was blatantly obvious.
He pulled at his collar. “I can’t keep this a secret from you guys.” He laughed, but it sounded fake. “I literally can’t, because you’d notice sooner or later.”
They waited.
He put his hands behind his back, stared at the ceiling, and began to tunelessly hum.
“Do you want me to tell them,” Hera quietly asked, but Kanan raised a hand in her direction and shook his head.
“Tell us what?” Zeb demanded.
Ezra shifted, and it seemed like he was clenching and unclenching his fists. He looked... lost, or afraid, and that didn’t belong on him, not like that.
“I’m... it’s like....”
Sabine felt pure dread rise up in her chest. Whatever it is, don’t say it. She thought that she would rather forever exist in that moment of anticipatory agony, than know. As things stood, it could be anything. There was even a small chance that it wasn’t really anything bad....
“My vision’s been getting worse for about a year. I’m going blind.” He weakly smiled. “Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.”
What.
What. No.
That didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be.
“What happened?” she distantly heard herself ask. “Is it from an injury?” If it was, she would find the person responsible, find them and kill them and tear out their eyes and present it to him on a silver platter....
“No, it’s genetic. Sacul Syndrome. My aunt had it. Normally it first starts in your late forties, I’m just unlucky enough to have the early-onset variety.”
Nobody to avenge herself upon, nobody to blame, only his parents for passing on the genes, and they were guiltless and dead besides.
“Are you sure about this? No mistake?”
Kanan spoke up. “I was there for the tests. I heard the formal diagnosis,” he paused, “and the prognosis. The medical droid was quite certain.”
“They’re not infallible. Do you trust it?”
“Yes. Enno-fifteen is the same droid who treated me, after Malachor.”
Sabine remembered “after Malachor”. She remembered Kanan – no. Ezra couldn’t be forced to go through that as well. It wasn’t fair. (Life wasn’t fair, she knew, but that didn’t stop her from wishing otherwise.)
“How –” how advanced is it, how much time do you have left, how did you not say anything, but the words caught in her throat.
“I understand that there will be questions,” Hera said calmly, too calmly. “I have prepared an overview, along with answers to some of the questions we anticipated. If you would care to look at this....”
“You seem to have everything under control,” Ezra said with a slight laugh, “so if that’s it, I guess I’ll... just....” He slipped past them, and was out of the room before Sabine could think to say anything.
She looked at the datapad she’d been given. The letters refused to resolve themselves into words, and seemed to lose all meaning under her gaze. She peered closer, and the lines blurred into an indistinct haze, as did everything else. Was she – crying?
She sank into a chair, and wiped angrily at her eyes. She had no reason to cry, she was perfectly fine, it wasn’t like she was the one losing her... going....
She pushed away the datapad, and it fell unheeded to the floor. “I can’t do this,” she muttered. “I can’t read, I can’t focus, I c-ca–” She burst out in tears. She couldn’t control it.
Somebody asked if she was okay, and she couldn’t even tell who it was despite knowing all the other people there. She wasn’t okay, she wasn’t in the same galaxy let alone same planet as “okay”, but she wasn’t the one they should be worrying about, she shouldn’t be causing any extra problems....
“I shouldn’t be crying,” she babbled, “not when everyone else is handling it so well, and you two had known earlier but Zeb just found out now and he’s calm and –” She buried her face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she managed.
“What makes you think I’m calm?” Zeb asked.
“You’ve been reading –”
“I’ve been turning pages,” he corrected, “but I haven’t looked at any of the text. You’re young still, and you’re in a safe environment. You don’t need to keep silent, and you don’t need to hide your grief.”
“I should be the one to apologize,” Hera said. Sabine looked up at her. “I shouldn’t have dumped all that information on you like that, and expected you to be able to read it so soon. Take those with you, and look through them when you feel up to it.”
Zeb took another glance at his datapad, then put it away. “Can you just tell us the most important stuff we need to know?”
Hera spoke in a measured tone. “Currently, Ezra’s main problems are difficulty seeing in low light and a reduced field of vision.” Zeb’s ears tensed and lowered, and Sabine remembered him complaining about Ezra keeping the light on at night. “There are also issues with fine detail such as small text, and distant objects, but those are easily compensated for.
"At the moment, accommodation is... mostly....” She trailed off. Kanan put an arm around her shoulder, and she leaned into him. Light glistened off her cheek.
“Accommodation is mostly limited to making sure there is sufficient illumination, and that any text is large enough,” he continued, as if they had practiced it. Maybe they had. “I’ll be working with him, on other matters, for the future.”
Sabine didn’t want to be helpless and powerless; not in this, not in anything. “Can anything be done to help?”
“Help, yes. Be there for him, try not to leave things in the way, don’t grab his arm without asking.... But as for preventing further vision loss, or restoring what he’s already lost, no.”
“...how long?” Zeb said. “How long does he have?”
“He’s not dying,” Hera immediately corrected, but she knew what was meant. They all did.
“Enno-fifteen didn’t give a definite timescale,” Kanan said. “There are too many variables to predict the course of any disorder with both accuracy and precision, he told us.” His hand reached for Hera’s. “He was however confident that total vision loss would happen within five years, following significant and then severe impairment.”
"And ‘total’ here means...?”
Kanan vaguely waved his free hand in front of his face. “Nothing.”
Five years wasn’t enough time. And Sabine wasn’t exactly sure how “significant” or “severe” impairment were defined, but they couldn’t be good.
She felt numb, like all the blood had drained out of her. The skin under her eyes was sore and irritated. “Is that it then for now?”
Chopper beeped a negative. Wait, hadn’t he been over there? She hadn’t noticed him moving, and turned to look.
He was at the door. Apparently he had left the room and just then come back. He carried with him a stack of mugs, a thermos, and a box filled with what looked like flavour packets.
He came over, and waved at her to take something to drink. She poured herself a mug of what certainly appeared to be hot water, and selected a flavour packet. She didn’t normally pick “hot chocolate”, but at the moment that comfort was what she wanted.
She didn’t bother to sniff the packet before tearing it open and mixing the powder with the water. “If this is capsaicin powder again I’m going to disassemble you,” she said, but the threat had no energy behind it. Chopper gave a halfhearted intended-to-be-mocking chuckle.
The droid moved on. Zeb took three different packets to stir in. She didn’t know how he could even drink that concoction; she had tried it once, and couldn’t taste anything else for the rest of the day. Sometimes she wondered if it was a “Lasat” thing or a “Zeb” thing. Maybe his species had a different tongue configuration, or maybe he was just weird. Zeb’s tastes were an easy and safe subject to speculate on.
Hera quietly told Kanan what flavours there were; he made his choice, and she handed it to him. Just a small thing, but it was impossible for him to do by himself, no matter how good he was with the Force.
Sabine imagined Ezra asking what flavour a packet was, because he couldn’t see. If she thought about it, she didn’t have to imagine. She remembered the last time they’d had this, and how he had asked her to pick out one for him. The writing on the packets was small. He hadn’t been able to read it.
She slowly sipped at the beverage. Holding it gave her hands something to do, and an excuse for none of them to talk. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted it to be a dream and wake up in a better world, where nobody was going blind and Chopper didn’t have to be helpful. While she was at it, she might as well wish for the Empire to spontaneously collapse with nobody else having to die, and ration bars to taste good; that was roughly as likely, and if she was going to engage in fantasy she might as well dream big.
The hot chocolate was lukewarm, and mostly finished. She didn’t remember drinking it. Some of the powder had settled to the bottom, creating abstract patterns of dark and pale. She remembered hearing of telling one’s fortune by the arrangement of tea leaves left afterwards. Those weren’t leaves, but she could see the future anyways: Ezra turning his head at the sound of her voice, and his eyes never focusing on her, maybe only half-open because it didn’t matter to him. Or maybe it was her imagination. It didn’t matter the source, if it was still going to happen.
She drained the rest of the beverage, and left her mug on the table when she got up. It didn’t matter. Nothing that she could do really mattered there.