#stlwrt: alex

[reawakcn]

[ @stlwrt ] Every fight I say to myself I might go down, but I’ll go down swingin’. / Alex to Shamara | rivals starters | accepting

"You'd be surprised how common a sentiment that is." Right up until 'going down' is the only option. And then people panic. They might run, might sob, might beg. But rarely do they all truly commit and fight to the bitter end.

Shamara has seen enough of those herself. Men in armor reduced to pleading, grasping for whatever they thought would bring them mercy. Offering credits, information... she recalls one trying to offer his firstborn upon the myth that Jedi stole children from their cribs. That one, she'd broken an additional rib for.

"It isn't until you're faced with it that you find out the truth. What you will do."

A worn robe slips off shoulders, cast to the side to flutter down onto a battered chair. "I assume you nearly struck that point yourself recently."

[reawakcn]

[ @stlwrt alex -> shamara ] alexandra's metal hand gently ghost over the bruises on green skin, barely hand marks purposefully lingering on her thighs, drawing a delicate line from hip to stomach to intertwine with shamara's hand. presses a kiss on each of her knuckles. it's quiet, and they're barely coming down from the euphoria of their high, but there's something that coaxes alex just a tad further than she would usually be anyway. "i love you." murmured against the back of shamara's hand, almost unheard, but no less sincere all the same. [unprompted]

the light in the other room flickers. buzzes. the only thing to break the silence over breathing that is just starting to slow. sweat cools over the both of them, sticking bare skin together. her own hair sticks to her forehead, sticks to the back of her neck, to her throat, curls and catches in joints.

they should get up. should take the luxury of a rare sanisteam.

it's hard not seeing this time as something rare. something stolen away between heartbeats. she's still getting used to the fact that plunging into bed with another doesn't have to be hurried and hungry and half-secret.

no, just her own existence now was nigh on taboo.

Alex mumbles against Shamara's hand, and the mirialan's breath caught in her throat.

'I love you'.

Shamara looks away. focuses her gaze on the opposing wall. following cracks in the flimsy substructure. this was a mistake. getting involved with someone. it was a mistake. the words have been said, and that made this all the more real.

and the last woman Shamara had loved was—

died with the rest of the Jedi.

Alex was not a Jedi. but that didn't make the risk any less. the Empire would not take mercy on her just because she wasn't Force-sensitive, should they be caught. if things went for the worse, Alex was a liability. not a strength.

"don't say that."

[reawakcn]

she lets it stand a moment longer, deathly aware of both her own and Alex's heartbeat and breathing alike. then Shamara shrugged out of the embrace. regardless of how genuine the comfort was, it grated against her. what comfort could bring back a community? what comfort could undo the damage that has been done? nothing could bring back the dead any more than it could undo the steady march of time.

it would fester. she knew this. so let it. Shamara has been damned from the moment she survived.

"we should get some rest."

"i know." and still she tugs shamara a bit closer anyway, a bit tighter, lips pressed against the other's dark hair like she's yet to notice any of her stiffness. even then, alexandra minds little—not now, not when she feels more real than some intangible, fading layer of mist.

for a second, alex takes in the faint, faint smell of the cheap generic soap they got the other day by the lungful, a strange comfort amongst everything. she could allow herself that much.

she's never been good at the whole comforting thing, never been all that great with words, but if there's anything she could do, she hopes shamara could find some manner of peace. if only for a moment.

[reawakcn]

"it doesn't matter, does it." she's alive. they are not. and raising her own lightsabers in defiance of the suffocating cloud that's come down would only get her killed, too. she's always been a shadow of some sorts, drifting from dark corner to dark corner, but the losses have stolen away the gleam of the action with it. "they are dead, Alex. that's all there is to it."

fingers pick at the tie at the end of her braid, dark blue eyes refusing to look straight at the human sitting on the bed. the tie snaps, and Shamara simply lets it fall to the floor, fingers stabbing through the stranded weave and almost ripping it apart. letting the now-waves settle around her shoulders. drape loosely around the frame of her narrow features.

I survived because I wasn't there.

"how—" and the question stays stuck in alex's throat for a moment, unbidden, marred slightly with the rasp that comes with the sudden dryness of her mouth. the screwdriver left next to her arm on the table, momentarily forgotten.

perhaps it's best to say some word of comfort. some manner of ... something that could alleviate— whatever it is. she doesn't like it, the feeling that shamara could fade out of her grasp at any second, away into the chasm that she hates that she could never fully understand.

but it's not about her, is it? it's never been. and shamara has never been some damsel waiting for her knight. "—how did you survive?"

[reawakcn]

"no. sometimes you just die." that's a fact of life. nothing was guaranteed safe. less still if you traveled, if you fought, if your whole life was spent in destruction for a greater goal of preservation.

and sometimes you just die because you didn't see it coming. and how could any of them? they had trusted the clone army with their lives. they'd had no other choice.

and sometimes Shamara wondered if it would've been easier to have been the one who died there — if she had been working with soldiers instead of chasing rumors.

alexandra makes a distant sound of acknowledgement, the screwdriver in her good hand briefly stopping its twirl when she sees the look in shamara's eyes. she thinks she's seen it before, that look—the same look that the last jedi she saw had, moments before they get pinned down by supposed comrades and loyal soldiers.

it'd made sense why the order had lost. the schemes behind such a plan remain largely unknown to all but perhaps a handful in the vast universe, buried under the fallacy that the jedi had betrayed what they were meant to protect. in the end, another legend fading from the galaxy with the sands of time.

there's a brief moment that passes going unsaid, heavy in a way that gives alex pause.

"sometimes there's no time to wait for the fight." she murmurs.

[reawakcn]

just like that. despite the tension and the quiet, bone-deep desperation to retain some kind of distance. to remain in denial. she's pulled in, tucked snug against a still-warm body. it feels familiar. safe. warm breath brushing the back of her neck, legs entangling in hers. cooler air raising bumps on exposed skin.

Alex's words could not be unsaid.

and as long as those words never left this room, assumed to hold only two people and little more, the two of them were safe.

but Shamara knew words like that would never stay contained forever.

one day they would be used against the two of them.

yet she allows herself to be pulled close, fingers intertwined with one another, hair spilled loose and damp and unkempt. allows herself to tuck in against someone who had just as much ripped out from beneath her, in a twisted way.

alex can't say that she expected shamara's response to be any good, because really— it wasn't going to be any good, not as they are. she knows shamara has her own hang ups, all that grief with no one to share, sitting tight in the corners of her ribcage.

she won't ever say that she sympathizes. she couldn't. but she knows, understands, and frankly? she doesn't have the heart to push.

her synthetic arm reflects a dull gleam under the barely visible light, curls a bit tighter around shamara's hand anyway. with a bit of force, tucks the mirialan in just flushed, skin against skin, fitting nicely against alexandra's fairly bigger frame, loosely but warm all the same, with the option for shamara to turn away should she choose to.

shamara tells her not to say it.

she complies, gaze falling to their intertwined hands as the thin blanket of silence falls on them again, head burying in the crook of shamara's neck. for a fraction of limitless time in the galaxy, shamara's hers. not a jedi, not some supposed runaway criminal, not an aimless woman trying to navigate her way forward in a universe that no longer welcomes her.

it's too luxury a facade, she's aware. it's one she's going to allow herself to have anyway.

[reawakcn]

"waiting for the moment they meet their match? no." shoulders roll, pulling and loosening sore muscle before Shamara reaches up to undo the pinned bun at the back of her head, loosing the braid that had become increasingly frayed over their long day.

"not all of us."

she thinks she will remember the ache for the rest of her life. every other Jedi in the galaxy wiped out in a single heartbeat.

and she'd only had the luck of working with no one but herself at the time, curled up in an abandoned ruin with the sun beating down too brightly.

they hadn't seen it coming.

alex falls silent. gaze casting upwards, briefly skimming shamara's frame, stopping just so at her face. lingers just a moment more than she usually would.

and then she looks back down at her prosthetic arm.

it's a choice she willingly made, not going for synthskin. the price to be paid in exchange for rolling out of the purge alive in all of her nervewracking, horror stricken glory. cold metal meeting her skin every time her shoulder shifts serves as a good reminder to always keep that part of her alive.

"something like that." she grunts. her throat feels dry. "—that all what jedi go through everyday?"