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Cinta is between jobs on Batuu when she feels it. When she feels the unmistakable tingle on the back of her neck that means someone is following her.
She doesn’t react to it. Doesn’t even cast a sly glance over her shoulder to see if she can tell who it is. In all likelihood that would scare them off before she has a chance to find out what they want. She knows from experience. This is far from the first time someone’s been stupid enough to try to tail her.
Almost every other time it’s happened, someone has ended up dead. And it’s never been Cinta.
She goes about her business normally for a minute, checking out the fresh fruit on the stands in the Black Spire market to pick out something to take back to the safehouse with her. The meilooruns must have just been imported that morning, so she plucks one off the stand, flips a coin to the Gran running the shop, and tucks the fruit into her pocket. She’d prefer to do a bit more shopping, seeing as she never knows how long a break will last or how many home-cooked meals she has left in that time, but the matter of her follower makes that a task for later. No time to pick out produce when your life is on the line.
Cinta makes sure to lead them away from people as she exits the market, taking one less-populated street after another until she knows she’s about to turn into an abandoned alley. All the while she strains to hear her stalker’s footsteps, faint but nevertheless present a few paces behind. Something familiar about them…
As she turns the corner into the alley, her hand drifts up to the inside of her jacket, reaching for her blaster. She extracts it from her pocket with her right hand, then tucks it under her left arm and turns around all in one fluid motion, raising the weapon toward the soft underside of the chin of her shadow.
But, as if they knew what was going to happen all along, the stalker catches the muzzle of the blaster just before it reaches the height of their face.
A face Cinta knows all too well.
“Hey,” Vel Sartha says with a slight, shy grin. At least, she thinks it’s Vel. The face is Vel’s – the sad blue eyes, the cute pointed nose, the instinct to smile that she can’t totally resist when she sees Cinta. But so much of her is different, from the color of her hair to the way she stands. After a year apart, Cinta can’t be sure.
“Vel?” she asks as she lowers her gun, and the woman in front of her gives a little nod. “What…?”
“Fancy seeing you here,” Vel says, trying the smile again. But it just won’t reach her eyes, so she drops the act altogether. Her face sinks, making her look even more tired, even less like the Vel that Cinta knows. She sighs and nervously tucks a strand of auburn hair behind her ear. “Can we talk?”
Cinta doesn’t answer with words, just nods and leads the woman with the eyes and the name of the woman she loves – loved , she tells herself – out of the alley.
The silence on their walk to her safehouse is not a comfortable one. The air between them is so thick with so many past arguments, so much cold anger, so much resentfulness and regret that it makes it hard to even breathe. A year apart hasn’t done them any good in that regard. Everything that was wrong when they’d parted ways before is still wrong, if the silence is any indication.
She knows she can change that, knows all it would take to get Vel to tell her what’s going on is just one little question, but she walks in silence anyway. They’re better off this way, better off silent and apart. She’s told herself that a hundred times over the past year. A survivor like her and a rich girl like Vel....it could never work. Not in this life. Not while the Imperial flag still reigns.
When they make it to Cinta’s bunker of a safehouse, she finally gets a good look at the woman and feels a tightening in her chest. Vel may be visibly exhausted – as if she’s spent several nights in a row up until dawn contemplating a choice – and she may have changed up her clothes and hair, but she’s still every bit as beautiful as the day they met. Cinta has to try even harder now than she did back then to ignore that fact, to silence the memory of the kiss they’d shared that day, before everything got so much more complicated.
She pushes those thoughts to the box in the back of her mind where all the complicated thoughts go and crosses her arms as she leans against the wall, watching Vel take in the poor excuse for a living space.
“Thousands of planets in the galaxy and you just happened to run into me here?” she asks, and Vel finally looks up at her with a guilty half-smile.
“No, not exactly. I made Kleya tell me where you were,” she admits.
Cinta narrows her eyes at her. “Why?”
It’s quiet for a moment as Vel looks down at her feet again. The only sound in the room is the dripping of a pipe along one wall. It drips and drips and it drives Cinta mad waiting for Vel to say what she needs to say. Finally she takes a deep, heavy breath, then looks up and speaks in a voice that shakes harder with each word.
“I…came to say goodbye.”
The phrase comes out with a painful shudder, but it makes no sense to Cinta. They haven’t seen each other in a year, after all. A bit late to be saying goodbye at this point.
“What are you talking about?”
Vel exhales sharply and looks away again.
“I have this mission…” she says vaguely, shuffling between her feet as she stands in the middle of the room, looking smaller than she ever has. “I don’t expect to come back from it, and I just....I didn’t want to go without…seeing you one more time. Without saying....”
She can’t bring herself to finish her thought, instead sniffing and wiping at her eyes with her sleeve, and finally Cinta understands. Vel is here to tell her goodbye for good, to let her know she loves her one last time.
She’s here to do what no one else Cinta had ever lost got the chance to do before the Empire took them from her.
“Oh, Vel....” Cinta says, taking a step toward her, but Vel holds up a hand to keep her from taking any more.
“It’s okay. I understand now. It was always going to come to this,” she says, then stands up straight and tall. “I’m ready.”
Vel looks her dead in the eye as she says it, the first time she’s managed to do so since they reunited, and Cinta believes her. She believes Vel is ready to let go of all her doubts and fears, to face the fate she was never fully able to look at before.
She’s ready, but she’s never looked more like she needs a hug.
“Come here,” Cinta says, but she doesn’t actually give Vel a chance to do so before she steps forward and wraps the woman in her arms.
Vel melts into her embrace in an instant, face burying into her neck and fingers tightly gripping the fabric of Cinta’s jacket. Cinta feels her breathe a ragged breath and tries to be as comforting as possible, stroking her hair and saying all those sweet, soft things Vel used to say to her when she’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking from a nightmare. She must do an okay job of it because Vel is calm again by the time they find their way to the edge of Cinta’s bed to sit down.
Their hands are clasped together between them as Vel fills her in on what is sure to be her last mission. They’ve had many possible last missions before – and their hands had been clasped together before those every time as well – but this one truly seems as if there’s no way out. There is no other way to get what the rebellion needs, and survival would be a miracle. Cinta wants to argue that it doesn’t have to be Vel, that it could be almost anyone else, but it’s too late for that. Everything’s been put in place for her, and Vel has accepted her responsibility.
Cinta’s heart sits heavily in her chest when Vel tells her she’s accepted responsibility for how things had gone bad between them as well.
“I’m sorry,” she says simply but sincerely. “I’m sorry for…showing up here all of a sudden. For everything I tried to push on you before. I’m sorry I couldn’t just…be stronger, like you—”
“No. Vel, I’m sorry,” Cinta insists. “You were…you were always exactly what I needed. Even if I couldn’t admit it or want it.”
Vel shakes her head. “I held you back.”
Cinta reaches her free hand up to Vel’s chin and directs her gaze back to her own eyes.
“No. You kept me right where I needed to be. Kept me away from the dark,” she says, suddenly painfully aware of how they’re already speaking in the past tense even though Vel is still right there in front of her. “I’m the one that should have held on tighter…”
Trying in vain to make up for lost time, she squeezes the hand she holds. But it’s not enough. Not enough to show Vel just how much she appreciates her and wishes she’d done right by her. Not enough to show her how much she still cares for her and always will.
Her eyes drift down from Vel’s eyes to her lips and she can’t think of anything better to do to show her affection than to kiss her. She leans in slowly, carefully, giving Vel ample time to pull away if she wants. But she doesn’t. She closes the rest of the gap herself and once again they collide with a familiar electricity, a fire neither has been able to find in anyone else before or since each other. Cinta instantly knows she’s made the right decision because Vel’s lips feel like home, and she can’t believe she’s been away for so long.
Now that she’s back, she can’t get close enough. The kiss goes on perfectly for a while but Cinta soon grows tired of the awkward angle of sitting side by side. She breaks away for an agonizing moment and climbs into Vel’s lap, straddling her thighs as she takes off her own jacket and shirt. Vel looks up at her with an awe, a reverence, that until that moment Cinta would’ve thought was only reserved for seeing a miracle or looking on the face of one’s god. She has no idea how she’s worthy of such a look, but she holds Vel’s face in her hands and memorizes it, knowing no one else in the galaxy could ever look at her that way again.
Their lips meet briefly and sweetly again before Vel grows distracted by all the newly uncovered skin now at her eye level, and she moves on to give attention to as much of it as possible. Cinta leans into her as her head falls back in satisfaction, a wave of pleasure rolling over her body and through her mind as Vel reacquaints herself with all the places her lips and tongue and teeth can make Cinta feel the best. All the places she’d never forget for as long as she lived.
Cinta puts that particularly bittersweet thought out of her mind as Vel shrugs out of her jacket, just in time for Cinta's hands to find their way beneath her shirt to caress her soft skin. Vel shudders at the warmth, just as she had the first time Cinta had done the same out on Aldhani, back when the only thing that worried either of them was whether they’d be heard by the men across the campsite. There’s no danger of that now, but Cinta still uses her mouth to muffle the moan she elicits from Vel’s lips when she takes her breasts in her hands.
From then on there is no space between them, no room for fear or frustration or hostility. By the time Cinta lies back on the bed and drags Vel along with her, they have let go of all the doubts that had once convinced them there were too many differences between them to allow this to work.
“Touch me,” she demands, and Vel seems as if she might come undone right then and there.
But she bites her lip hard to quash the feeling and does as she’s ordered, taking every bit of pleasure she can from the solemn duty.
The rest of the night is exactly what Cinta hasn’t realized she’s needed for so long. It’s heavy, and it’s light at the same time. It’s sorrowful and it’s the greatest joy she’s ever known. It’s beautiful and it’s difficult and it’s easy and it’s a mess. It’s familiar and also new. And it’s perfect. It’s them. Cinta knows she’s missed it. She’s missed Vel – the feeling of her, the taste of her, the desire of her – more than she could ever say.
Vel almost cries. She almost lets all the feelings loose at once and becomes a broken dam of rage and dread and love and fear and hope and misery. But she holds it back. She stays in the moment and the tears only make it as far as the edges of her eyes. Cinta would’ve wiped them away if they’d gone any further, but she doesn’t have to. Vel is strong for her one last time. She always was, even if neither of them could see it.
For once in their lives they are perfectly in sync, and they reach the edge at the same time, tumbling, plunging, falling into the abyss as one, hanging on for dear life even though they know what fate awaits them at the bottom. Even though hanging on can’t stop the sudden impact that’s coming. It can’t keep them together. It never could. The harder they’d tried to hold on, the harder it was when they drifted apart again eventually.
But they don’t let go even when it’s done, and they don’t talk afterward. What else could even be discussed that their bodies hadn’t already said for them? Plenty, Cinta supposes, but most of it is too painful to even think about. Not that that stops her from thinking about all of it as Vel drifts off to sleep in her arms, leaving Cinta to lie awake half the night thinking of it all alone. Thinking of how she’ll spend the rest of her life remembering this night and all the regrets that filled her very soul as she lay there. She’d never watch Vel sleep beside her again after this, would never wake up to Vel watching her with that adoring look in her eyes. She’d never know what it would be like to wake up in a free galaxy with the woman she loves.
How could she have gone through so much of this life trying not to feel anything, when she didn’t know if she could find Vel again in the next one? How stupid could she have been to waste so many of the days and nights they might’ve had in the galaxy they did know? Somehow, Cinta has to try to make up for them. She has to do something, anything, to show Vel that she is the only thing that ever should have mattered to her.
Cinta falls asleep somewhere in the early hours of the morning, still not sure what to say. And when she wakes, Vel’s wonderful, wondrous blue eyes are taking in as much of her as they can. She seems so at peace that Cinta thinks she might not say anything after all, so as not to cause her any more doubts before going off to do what she needs to do.
Vel beats her to the punch anyway.
“Thank you,” she whispers as soon as she’s sure Cinta is awake. “I’m so glad I found you.”
Cinta can’t miss the double meaning in what she says, that she is both grateful for the night they’d spent together and happy that, out of all the trillions of people in the galaxy, they had found each other. For whatever brief time they’d had.
“So am I,” Cinta says, attempting to match the contented smile on Vel’s face but failing miserably.
The smile and the gentle way Vel caresses her skin are suddenly too much, on top of all the thoughts that had kept her up all night. Cinta sits up and leaves the bed, not watching what she assumes is a look of dismay as it settles in on Vel’s face. Instead she busies herself gathering her clothes and her thoughts.
One is much easier than the other. She slips back into her underwear and her pants with her head still spinning. But then she goes to put on her bra and for some reason remembers how adamant Vel had always been on Aldhani that such an article of clothing shouldn’t ever get too far away in their moments of intimacy, “lest our tits freeze off afterward.” Cinta can’t decide whether to laugh or cry when she hears that phrase in Vel’s voice inside her head, and both emotions come out at once in a strangled gasp as she gets the thing on.
She still doesn’t know what she’s going to say when she turns back around and sees Vel sitting up in her bed watching her, a familiar look of worry creasing her eyebrows.
“Vel…” Cinta says desperately. “Don’t go.”
Vel lets out a breath that’s almost a chuckle. “Oh, now you don’t want me to go? When I’ve finally learned how to let go and do this the right way?”
“It’s not the right way. You were right all along,” Cinta tells her. She steps back toward the bed, puts a knee down on it as she slides her hand along Vel’s jaw. Vel’s eyes close slowly at the touch, and all at once Cinta is sure of what she wants to say. “The only way we can do this is together.”
Vel opens her eyes again, searching Cinta’s for some hidden meaning.
“Together?”
“I can’t do it without you,” Cinta promises. “Don’t go.”
She takes Vel’s hand, and Vel gives a mournful sigh as she stares down at their entwined fingers.
“I have to. Someone has to,” she insists.
Cinta knows she’s right. She knows that without someone’s sacrifice, the galaxy might never find peace again. It’s been the one thing she’s known all along. The one thing she was sure of when everything else was in doubt. She’d just always been sure she would be the one making that sacrifice.
And she still is.
“Then we both go.”
Vel’s eyes dart from their hands to Cinta’s eyes. “No…”
“It wasn’t a question,” Cinta tells her. “You need a partner. And I need my partner.”
She pulls Vel close and rests her forehead against hers. Vel breathes heavily as she considers the implications, weighs the stakes of Cinta’s plan.
She stammers out what she must know is a futile half rebuttal. “But…but if we both…”
“Then we’ll get to try this all again much sooner than we thought,” Cinta finishes with an optimism that draws Vel’s eyes back to her. She squeezes her hand once more. “Maybe it’ll all be easier the next time around. Maybe…it’ll be better in the next life.”
Cinta smiles at Vel, and after a moment Vel smiles back. She wonders in how many of her past lives she’s been blessed to know that smile.
“As long as you’re there…that’s all I need,” Vel says, speaking the very words in Cinta’s mind. “In this life or any other.”
~
They leave this life together…hands and souls bound....