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She wakes screaming.
Sweat drenches her skin where her dream self was just soaked in blood. Sol's blood.
Sol's dead.
She killed Sol.
Osha gasps for air, but her lungs constrict, tight and rejecting.
The world spins, a mad kaleidoscope of colour and shapes.
There's a wild rush of wind in her ears, drowning out all other sounds.
Her body's slipping away from her, fracturing. She knows it, though she feels none of it. Nothing but a withering numbness at her core as she fades from existence.
What is this? The universe taking its revenge on her, plunging her into the abyss, casting her from this life, erasing her?
Maybe she deserves it. Maybe she should succumb. It would be so easy.
Firm hands wrap around her wrist and squeeze pain into her.
She cries out. Air rushes in.
"Breathe, Osha. That's it. Breathe."
His voice. It rings, the only sound in the world.
Her vision clears. Dark eyes pore anxiously into hers.
His face. It consumes her vision.
She startles away from him. Sol is dead because of him.
He came into her life. He drew the shades aside, let the truth blind her like a raging sun. Set her free, when she was so content to be in chains.
Imagine. To want to be the bird in its gilded cage, to kiss the hand of the one who clipped her wings, who turned the key to lock her away before throwing it into the aether. To peck angrily at the hand that tore itself raw breaking threw the bars to wrench her to freedom, who would mend her wings, who would cast her into the sky.
He's turned her world upside down.
Or, perhaps, it was always unbalanced, and he's righted it, at last.
She can't tell. And that scares her most of all.
"You're having second thoughts," he whispers, and there's no judgement behind those words.
Her thoughts are beyond that. Circling again and again. Tenth, thirteenth, sixteenth thoughts, and more.
How different everything looked in the immediate aftermath, saying goodbye to Mae, taking his hand, Sol's lightsaber in her other.
Bled red as Sol bled red over her in her dream.
It's okay.
That's what Sol whispered before she killed him. As if she needed his permission, as if he could absolve her.
"It's okay," he says now, as if he can assuage her guilt, the tremor of despair rippling through her, the bile bubbling up like a geyser in her throat.
She shoves him away.
He doesn't stop the fall, thudding against the hard surface of the cave without so much as flinching.
"Leave me alone," she hisses.
He stares at her, those dark eyes so sharp, so appraising, like they can really see.
What do they see? A mouse? A manticore? A mule?
"That Jedi doesn't deserve your regret," he says gently. "You gave him your trust, your respect, your love, your anger. That's enough. No more."
And now he would order her emotions. "I can't close off the guilt. I'm not heartless."
It's a dagger she meant to cut him to the core, twist in, but his face remains impassive. "Why did you come with me if you think I'm a monster?"
Because I might be one too.
She doesn't say it aloud; he doesn't seem to need her to.
His gaze darkens, something like anger flashing in his eyes. "You are not a monster."
It's the intensity with which he says it, as if he's afraid of that thought nestling like a seed in her heart and birthing some poisonous fruit that will leave her to rot, that causes her to falter.
"They were monsters," he presses on through her shaken silence, "For inserting themselves into your life. And he was a monster for wrenching your choices away from you. But you..." his voice cracks, his eyes misting. "You are beautiful, Osha Aniseya."
He cracks her open so perfectly with those five words.
The first sob rips free of her, a clap of thunder in the cave, before she's bent over double, dry heaving as years of pent up sorrow burst forth, a flood finally breaking free of the dam.
He wraps himself around her, a warm blanket swaddling her body in tenderness. In...
... love?
She settles into the shape of him, her body keen to fit.
"You are not a weed to be yanked from the garden. You are a rose, petals blossoming, thorns prickling, destined to bask in the sun. I will rip the clouds from the sky if they dare cast you in shadows."
Through the grief something glimmers, a diamond peering through mounds of dirt. She cannot name it, even as it pulses deep inside her, a force of its own.
Her head tilts up, her lips accidentally, instinctively brushing his neck.
A sharp intake of breath. His. A sigh, tremulous. "...Osha..."
Her body quivers with a hunger. A need that wasn't there before, that could burn a planet to ashes now. She shifts against him, and he reacts with guttural moan, fingers lacing through her hair, adjusts her face until his lips quiver a breath from hers, poised to strike, to claim.
"Be sure," he whispers. "I don't want you to regret this... if it's only to lessen the burden in your heart."
"It is," she says, feeling where those threads of need have woven themselves into an intricate knot, where her body would turn her grief into a bittersweet pleasure. But there's also a thrumming string that was there before tonight, since she first saw him in the shop, before she knew who he was, when her soul ignited with curiosity, when her spirit stirred with recognition. A flame fanned over this very long day, seeing him, all of him, emerge from the water, toned form slick from his quick swim, hearing him speak of her with such reverence, with respect. "But it's also you. And it's what I want. And you would be crueler to deny me."
A smirk shivers across his lips, his eyes dancing in the dark with an impossible starlight. "I've wanted to do this since you first stepped into my shop."
"Shut up and kiss me already, Qimir."
He does, lips crashing in like a perfect storm, electric against her own.
Her whole body trembles with desire, fingers splaying against his bare arm, finding the ridges in his muscles, grasping for purchase.
He lays her down on the thin bed, his weight comfortable against her, pressing into her.
Warmth spreads between her legs, and she just knows she's going to shatter before they even start.
His lips slip away, trace a path down her chin, down her neck, as he slides down her. One hand ducks below her tunic, trails a path across the bare skin of her belly, up, up, up to her breasts.
Her back arches at his light touch, skin on skin. She needs more.
She scrabbles at his tank, fumbling to tear it away.
He retreats from her, and a cold wind steals in. She frowns at him, until he ably removes his tank and tosses it aside, leaving his chest bare to the air.
She grins, pulling off her shirt the same.
He stares down at her, a drunken look in his eyes. "Oh, Osha," he breathes, before descending upon her again, chest against chest, lips against lips.
She runs her hands over his back, his chiseled blades, his firm shoulders, the grooves of that horrible scar.
He moans into their kiss.
"Did I hurt you?" she asks, worried.
"Never," he assures her. "Your touch is... soothing."
Yours is fire, she thinks to herself. The kind that stokes life without destroying it. And she will let him burn away the terror of her past, so she can emerge, reborn.
He holds her gaze, and she sees the question in them before he can ask it. "Yes. Please."
He's so cautious--too cautious--in the undressing, but there's a passionate violence in his gaze when he drinks her in. He yanks off the last of his clothes and they are both there in the cave, in the dark, bodies thrumming to an ancient melody of desire.
She cries when he comes into her, though he is so gentle, her mind splintering into a galaxy. The force is alive between them, crackling like lightning. Her senses sharpen, the world clearer, his touch radioactive.
They move together, dancers perfectly synchronized to a song only they can hear, their hearts beating at pace with one another.
Their voices carry each other's names like prayers on the wind, breathless symphonies of bliss, as their bodies shatter, and shudder, and still.
They lay together in silence, pressed in closed, breaths mingling. He traces a finger along cheek, strokes her sweat drenched hair out of her eyes, kisses whatever skin he can reach. She could be a goddess, he her only worshipper.
Adoration as she's never known.
Maybe, possibly, love.
"Are you happy, Osha?" he murmurs into her neck.
She stares at him, the lazy strands of hair dangling in his face, those eyes so wide and needing.
How did she never realize how lost he was? Like her.
They've been found in each other.
"Incandescent."