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He let out a damp light moan from the back of his mouth as she lowered down and his mind struck upon an ugly nail in his heart. He looked down at her stomach lit sparsely by some distant light beaming into the dark little place. Her eyes gazing down at him as they settled. Her hair ruffled with remnants of aircurled bends and her voice echoing with his across the room. The momentary clarity as though he’d finished. You idiot, he thought. You keep doing this. He stopped thrusting up and his face curled woundedly. She noticed immediately and cupped his jaw.
Shh, she whispered. It’s okay.
He wanted to believe her. He exhaled deeply and was about to move to get up, but his eyes once more traced into hers and he lay stunned again. Goddammit, she was beautiful.
What’s wrong?
He took careful breaths. He spoke warily. The usual. That I’m doing something I shouldnt.
Does it feel like it?
It does, I w. She cut him off.
It doesnt sound like it’s such a bad idea. She let out a playful moan and rose atop his cock. It put a dumb smile on his face. He acquiesced in part and put a hand on her hip. She smiled and grabbed his other and placed it on her stomach. His mouth hung open. The dual softness of her hand and midriff.
Alright, he smiled. Maybe it’s a bad idea for different reasons.
Do you want to talk about it more?
Right now?
You’d prefer to not be inside me?
He chuckled and shook his head. He reclined against the pillow. If you insist.
I dont want to insist anything. I dont. She stumbled on her tongue. If you want me to get off you, I will. I just wanted to teas. His turn to cut her off.
It’s okay, ‘mo. I want this. God she was young. A hand raised to her jaw and she smiled and sighed. He pulsed his cock and she noticed and lit up. Despite his vulnerability he still had that weight to his voice and he was still inside her. She smiled, her voice steady as she continued.
Okay. The irony of the turnaround was not lost on her. What was troubling you tonight to cause you to debase yourself again?
Another light laugh from him. Memories and what I’m doing with myself now.
The war?
The war. The assault on Steadfast. Kid I knew was. He wanted to say “a bit younger than you” but that immediate made him feel like utter shit. Twenty or so. Twenty-four? He wanted to be an artist after it was over. Or, a professional one. He’d shown me some of his work before and it had some genuine promise. We’d spoken last before the attack and as we were pulling out after the initial assault he took a shot to the skull and the tophalf of it splattered on the ground and I almost threw up. I still dont know how I managed to make it out of there. It was a fucking nightmare. His mind raced with the echoes of everything he experienced there. The scattered radio messages—terrified friends overwhelmed by the pure scale of the horror they were facing down and the terror in their hearts over the very thought of failure. The screams and the cries. He didnt want to turn his comms off if only so their death rattles had an audience as to not die alone in that hell. The sight of the relief ships falling out of the blackened sky like birds shot in midair. The lander he was on was lucky to have been just above the Steadfast and as such it didnt have the displeasure of dealing with the voltaic bloom but he saw out the window the firmament painted with that unimaginable bluish crackle. He thought he had died and was seeing the absurd or that he'd hit his head real bad on the way back to the lander. Once he realized it wasnt the most impressive optical illusion of his life it didnt even occur to him that it was at all part of the war. The place already sparkled with the occasional wisp of current and he wondered if hell had finally sputtered through the depths of this godawful realm and put an end to everything. She looked down at him with a woman’s care. Warm and inclusive. She knew he wouldnt stray permanently into the realm of comfort but she could at least keep him from solely residing in the depths of his guilt. She squeezed his hand and his mind returned to the room.
And you think you arent doing enough?
Yes. I dont know. I wonder a lot of the time if he should’ve lived instead of me. What difference I made and what ones I do make now as peace unfurls itself.
What else is there to do in peacetime?
I dont know. More than what I’m up to. His eyes traced down to where they met. Everslight glistening sweat. His cock in her and everything that made him feel. Hell in his mind even as he lay in heaven.
What was his name?
Albert.
Are you comparing yourself to him right now?
He sighed. I am. I guess I think he’d be a better case to survive Exegol.
Because he was younger?
Because he was younger and because he was an artist. He said he wanted to help contribute to whatever regime would come after. Inspiring people. Helping promote reconstruction efforts after the dust settled. That sort of thing. His eyes traced to the window. There was an antifascist mural some art students had hung up and it sat in the plaza to dazzling effect. The interstellar orange shade of the Resistance sharply complimenting a warmer blue hue. It was immediately evocative and even then there seemed to be some below admiring it. He tilted his head back to her. I cant help but think there’s something more immediately moving to imagery. The weight of iconography. Colors and bold font and symbols and everything. I guess what I’m saying is I wonder just how much better my way is to theirs.
Does it have to be competitive?
No, it’s just. I’m here and he isnt. So many people arent. People I’ve served with and people I’ve put down. And I’m not doing enough to justify that. If he were alive he’d populate the universe with more inspirational vistas. I’m alive and I write books after archeological expeditions. It’s not as immediately evocative.
It’s the same. It just requires more than just a glance. You published Rise and Fall freely. It’s everywhere, now. I know for a fact that half the class has read it in their free time. Besides, you clearly believe in yourself or you wouldnt have bothered with its thesis. It clearly has teeth that you believe in.
He sighed and couldnt help but feel more than a bit enthused to be reminded that she appreciated it. Ego. I guess it’s the shame that is so heavy to it. War guilt. That I’m here and so many arent and if my doing is enough. His eyes traced back down. Her green sweater she always wore to class lazily draping off her shoulders like a shawl dangling about her and the perverted contrast of how he saw it now in her room. Her breasts in the dark and her warmth and the better thoughts in his mind. The agonies of his heart tracing back through his arteries.
She smiled down at him and slowly rose and lowered herself on his cock. He gasped boyishly and she held his hand. You deserve this. You deserve your life and all its opportunities to inspire. Your art isnt lesser just because it includes footnotes.
He chuckled at that and began thrusting up into her. Her brown eyes bulbous in the dark. The face she made when he hit a good spot with it. The dirtier parts of his soul flushing into his efforts. He rose and lifted her and put her on her back and started fucking into her with vigor. She laughed at the execution. Her bed was a mess and her hair was in her eyes and some of her sweater spread across her stomach and for some reason that just made him even more desperate for her. Maybe he was awful but if it was fine by her, he appreciated it. Maybe he would reserve memories for the guilt. He groped her as he fucked her hungrily. The green of her top fueling something dark in him even as he swore he was better than that. Times they spoke after lectures and her smiles he desperately read as neutral out of duty. So much for that.
She smiled at the reversal as she adjusted her legs and found relief that he’d for the night at least finally snapped out of the spiral. She privately celebrated with the newfound pace of his length and the sounds in her ear as he undid himself for her when the rumbles of a thunderstorm levied themselves distantly. Rain on the wind through the opened window. He’d stopped suddenly and she thought for a moment and another distant thunderclap informed her. He was breathing heavily and she held him close and he felt so small and weak and pathetic and she shh’d into his ear and rolled him into a close hug. He was shivering and numbed as the storm trudged closer and as the glaives’ currents burst upon the ground like firebombs as the downpour shuffled to their neighborhood. He’d seen a civilian craft in the barrage melt into powder in the sky and the corpse of the poor fucker wringing out unnaturally into the chasm below. It didnt seem real. Something out of a pulp fiction magazine. Comical and unending. He wasnt sure he would have believed it if he wasnt witness to it. I’m here, she whispered in his ear. You’re safe. You’re safe. She took effort to breathe under the four-seven-eight rhythm and he followed in her steps and the two fell into a comforting mode. The memories blurred. The death and the blood. He remembered a tense encounter aboard the Steadfast where it was him and some other poor sod in plasticesque and he’d gotten a lucky shot right in the guy’s side causing him to whip around. Another fateful shot of his hit the backside of the lower filters, causing the thing to bolt off the guy’s head and he was finally more than just a statistic. A corpse rotting as history is written with the blood. He was young, too. Half his age? Fuck. It kept blurring even as the thunder shuddered closer and closer until he felt his grip on everything else fade as he passed into unconsciousness heavy with tiredness.
He woke a few hours later, the rain had passed and the window was open and the pleasant smell of petrichor filled the apartment in the humid and cold night. It was around ten and she was sitting on the bed next to him reading something. She noticed him as he rose.
How are you feeling?
Better. Needed to rest. He felt guilty and she could tell. She put a hand on his and his face curled back into a smile. Thank you. She saw he was formulating something in his mind. What would you have my next one be about?
Maybe something specifically on the New Republic? She rose to get a mug. Lukewarm coffee. Black. She handed it to him and he accepted it and took a sip as she spoke. I know it’s covered in Rise and Fall, but, maybe a specific dive into its failings? You do a pretty good job at it, but I dont doubt there’s an entire book on the subject out there to serve as a cautionary tale. The moment would be right for it, everyone’s galvanized politically. She saw his other hand spasm. It’d try to make up for all the harm, if nothing else.
He smiled at the sincerity. He pressed his hand into the table and its jittering ceased, if by force. He sipped and clicked his lips at the bitterness. Could be nice. Easier to find those archives. Topic’s more contemporary, but important all the same. His gaze turned to the window. The art in the plaza. When I was in grad school I remember the ethos of the environment. The student body and the staff.
How was it?
It was close to fifteen years ago. The student body had largely grown up in the shadow of the war and the staff fit into two camps, professors who had their academic careers slanted during the Imperial era, and those who managed to eek out a career managing to remain apolitical as you can in academia, if not outright collaborationists. Idealists and careerists. It created an odd synthesis of hope for the future versus a conservative and rigid fixity where history was more of an idea than material. That you could compromise and make it through the day unharmed. The hopefuls were in, and there was a push by the institution to give them newfound status, but you couldnt exactly purge the departments of their more reactionary academics out of fear of the consequences, so there was an uneasy peace. He thought for a moment. Microcosmic, that.
Darkly so.
Wish it wasnt.
It’d make for a good introduction story.
He chuckled. It would, wouldnt it? He sipped his coffee and continued. When I was finishing up my work I remember the distinct feeling that there was a newfound complacency by the idealists. That the New Republic was there to stay despite the rise of neofascism. That wars over the fate of democracy had been decided and that democracy had won and that it was immortal now. The reactionaries would grumble about being sidelined and argue to their bones the virtues of survival and dealmaking such that it’s almost compelling that Hosnian happened in the story of their lives. One of the stricklers didnt come in for a week and it turned out he’d killed himself. His wife and their kids were on Hosnian and no amount of his Quislingesque pocket love for Hux and his dedication to the past saved him, nor was it ever going to. His eyes facing again at the plaza.
I suppose you dont need to ask how the ethos is now.
He smirked. I mean, I’m not a postgrad anymore.
Fair enough.
Better or worse?
Better? Like I said. I think everything’s galvanized people out of complacency at last. It wont last forever, but nothing ever does. Sometimes you need to remind people of how much they stand to lose and hope to God they listen. Sometimes that comes in the form of theses and sometimes in the form of genocide. She sighed. I just hope it’s more permanent now.
The ephemerality of memory.
Wish it wasnt so integral.
Keeps things exciting.
She chuckled. It’s quite the time to be young. I guess that’s what people thought after Endor, though.
Even if that didnt end well for liberal democracy, it still seemed as though it could have eventually.
And here we are again. He finished his coffee and handed her the mug and she smiled and put it away and when she returned to the bed he was laying back down with his cock exposed and she smiled.
Let’s end things better than we did last time. She smiled and took his hand.