Alcohol warmed Mia, flowing through her veins in a way that stripped away inhibitions and made the problems of the galaxy seem far away. Her breath misted in the cool night as she slipped out of the wrecked wall of what had once been a bar under the Diarchy's reign.
Yaga Minor had folded under the weight of their assault, and the noise of the celebration chased her out into the night. She'd caught Itzhal's eye before slipping away, leaving Aether and his brother to continue their game.
The older Mandalorian’s footsteps whispered through the air, a rhythmic counterpoint to the sharp click of her boots as they struck the weathered iron plates of the pavement still littered with debris. He did not rush, his steps slow and measured, cautious against the hazy flow of alcohol that even now continued to filter into his blood, leaving the swirling air pleasantly cool against the heat of his body.
As he reached her side, the beskar plates that rested on his chest rose with the soft inbreath that filled his lungs; the vivid tang of static that lingered in the air, an atmosphere coated with the refuse of blaster fire and electromagnetic pulses that had torn through the Diarchy’s machine armies.
Toxic clouds, darker than the void of night, roamed across the curtain of stars, shrouding the world in an imperfect veil of darkness.
For a long minute, they didn’t speak, picking their way across broken streets and around chunks of twisted metal debris left from the fallen Lucrehulk, content in the quiet company until the noise of the celebration began to fade. Her sapphire gaze flicked sideways, an easy smile encouraged by the warmth of tihaar sitting on her chest.
“Close call,” she nodded to his shattered gauntlet.
He flexed his wrist in turn, lighter without the comforting caress of beskar.
“It was closer than I liked, but it was always going to be a risk,” He admitted, voice soft as if he feared anything more than a whisper would disturb the restful quiet of the night. “If there’s ever a next time, I’ll be sure to blow up that cloak of his before I put a bolt through his head.”
Magical pieces of cloth that swallowed blaster bolts hadn’t been part of his expectations for the night; it was almost depressing that he would have to add it to the list of things to worry about going forward. It was a list that just kept getting bigger and bigger.
With the whistle of the wind, he shrugged the worries away for another day, “What about you?”
Mia shook her head. “My quarry ran.” She lifted her eyes skyward and heaved a sigh. “Nothing but scraps and dents from the trenches.” She was leading them towards makeshift officers' quarters, still empty for most of them had found one party or another to attend.
“Is it wrong to want for a fight that's actually worth my while?”
They moved up dust covered stairs and through a door, someone had done their damndest to make the room livable. Sheets were pinned to keep out the draft from windows that had been blown inwards, the worst of the dust and shards of glass had been swept away, though a thin layer still coated the couch, rising in a small cloud as she dropped onto it, moving to undo her boots.
Stepping through the doorway, his eyes lingered on the faint flutter of the sheets pinned to the window and the smoke-stained frame covered in a layer of soot that faded to an off-colour white.
“I suppose it matters.”
He paused for a moment, contemplating whether, if he pulled back the sheets, the city would unfold like the vivid, fragmented images dancing in his imagination. Would the ruined skeletons of buildings still gleam with an inner fire tearing through the foundations, would bodies line the streets like discarded scraps, or were the men and women outside already successfully tearing down the signs of battle that had torn through Vjunhollow.
“I can’t imagine a threat worth your while would have been kind to those caught in the crossfire,” He pondered, eyes focused on the sheets that twisted with faint rays of light from outside. Slowly, he crossed his arms, leaving the battered pauldron settled over the top of his intact mirror-piece. “If such a threat had existed, I’m sure your intervention would have only been a matter of time, and yet the consequences would have been dire.”
Splinters of glass shattered under his boot, his heel scrunched deep into the hardwood, he pivoted into a twist that brought him to face the couch, and Mia Monroe.
“Did you want to feel your blood soar, or were you looking to be a hero?”
Mia paused, her fingers stopping on the fastenings on her boots as she lifted her gaze to look at him, a mix of surprise and hurt flickering briefly on her features before she folded it away.
“Neither.” She said softly, pulling the boot free, letting it fall to the floor with an audible thud. “I just…” she trailed off, letting out a huff of a laugh that was full of bitterness and shaking her head.
“I am useless without a fight. I don't know how to exist without it.”
And wasn’t that the saddest part of it all, Itzhal reflected.
“If I remember right, I once said that it’s the way of things; one conflict after another,” he sighed, the weariness crept into his features like the bleak approach of winter, slow but all-consuming. “With hollow promises offered on the brink of death, and ceasefires that only prolong till the next stage in an endless war, never peace.”
His smile was a sad and fickle thing as it forced its way upon his weathered face, “You’re not incapable of living without a fight, no, the Galaxy’s just the type of spiteful bastard to have never given you a chance to learn.”
The other boot slid to the floor with another thud, forgotten as her hands moved to her greaves.
“Maybe.” She sighed, “Or maybe I need a teacher.” The notion made her laugh, this time lighter before she shook her head, looking back up at Itzhal, sapphire eyes glittering in the low light as the greaves finally gave and fell away.
“Do you…” colour flushed her cheeks, the question fading on her lips and she dropped her eyes. “Nevermind. There's some tihaar on the table.” She nodded to the corner, focusing on removing her armour leg by leg before sliding the pauldrons off her shoulders.
Around the halfway point of the glass bottle, Tihaar swirled with Itzhal’s approach, the soft glow of the lights above glittering over the promise of new heat in his veins. He hardly needed it—he’d drunk more than enough for this. His steps quickened, past the worn table, closing the distance between himself and the ratty couch, with a final stride, his extended boot perched against the side of the armrest.
“I fear that I’m not much of a teacher,” He admitted, voice steady in a way that never quite came naturally, as his eyes trailed over the flush that crept up his fellow Mandalorian’s cheeks. “The Galaxy was a very different place when I was young enough to learn that lesson.”
With a deliberate, measured motion, Itzhal extended his finger along the soot-covered surface of his greaves, where the battered, pitted metal met the rugged leather of his boots. His touch was gentle, tracing the concealed seams that ran like hidden veins along the armour. Until, with a final extension that reached the base of his boot, he traced back through the route he’d travelled, followed by soft, metallic chirps that caressed the curve of his ear, up towards the cuff of his boot, where the greave started to slip without the support of the now deactivated magnetic locks. His hands were ready, fingers wrapping around the Mandalorian Iron as they guided them to settle beside the couch, as he shifted from one foot to the next.
“But,” he started, his words dripping with an amused drawl that had nothing to do with the concentration required for the clasps of his armour, “I’ve been told that one never learns without trying.”
The room fell quiet, permeated only by the soft click of magnetic clasps disengaging and the hiss of armour sliding away from the layers beneath before dropping heavily to meet their respective piles on a dust-covered floor.
Mia settled back, tucking her legs up underneath her, suddenly small without the heavy burden of armour to encase her. Her tipped back, resting as she watched Itzhal.
“You're the first person I've met that makes me want to try.” She said softly pink dusting her cheeks again, she looked away, finding something deliberately interesting in the cracked ceiling.
Perhaps, if she were in his shoes, she would realise the most interesting thing in the room was her.
Her porcelain skin was intricately marked by the responsibilities she bore—faint scars from challenges faced and trials passed—combined with the ever-present need for her Buy’ce guardianship left her uniquely pale. It was striking in a way that was hard to word, though no less important than the way it served to highlight the delicate blush blooming across her cheeks. So often, her smiles were small and gentle, a promise slipping between iron gates that knew how to keep the heart protected. This was different; her cheeks lit with a tender hue of soft pink that radiated warmth across her face, a peek of the woman beneath, alluring in all her different shades.
Was it any wonder that he couldn’t tear his eyes away? What did it matter that the ceiling was cracked or glass shards had been shovelled aside, concealed in the corners.
“I-i,” his tongue was heavy, an unexpected weight in the hollow of his mouth, a cavernous tumour that considered the words he had to say, he swallowed around the sudden absence of moisture, dry as a bone. What did it mean to try? What did it mean to fail?
He wasn’t sure.
“I know that I have not spoken much of my past,” his words were soft, measured, for all that they tore their way from his parched throat. “I have attempted to bury it as many times as I have found myself digging through the shadows of a life that sometimes feels more like a dream than memories.”
A bitter laugh filled the air as he shook his head, “When I was young and foolish, war was a thing of the past, discarded by those who would call themselves wiser than those who braced their weapons and kept an eye to the horizon for threats rather than hopes. I settled in that time, and I allowed that veil of lies to settle over my eyes. I learned to live without war, that in truth, I never really knew in the first place—how could I, when the Galaxy had finally found peace when I was only a child.”
Eventually, he forced himself to turn back towards her; his blue eyes lost in between recollection and self-recrimination, “Then, when I was truly blinded to anything but the hope for a better future, they ripped the veil off. I watched as the horizon filled with death, and the life I’d made burned beneath my feet. They did not kill me, and it was perhaps the cruellest thing they could have ever done, so I raged against them, again and again, for over twenty years of my life, I knew only pain and agony and the desire to make it so that others understood exactly how I felt when they made my chosen home burn. It did not stop because I decided so, it stopped because when they finally locked me away, I didn’t crawl out of that nightmare until everything I’d ever known was gone.”
He paused then, his chest lifting with every laboured inhale that stole a meagre drop of the oxygen his lungs so desperately needed, “I want to try,” he admitted, a whisper of a whisper, as if the Galaxy would tear it all away, if only for the sake of making him suffer. “Spirits, damned, I really want to try, but I do not know if I am ready to try, just as I do not know what I would do if I lost everything again.”
Mia’s gaze moved back to him, the weight of his words settling on her chest. His story was familiar, not because she’d truly lived it, but because she had lost everything…and she had also been the person on the other side who had taken everything. She went very still, the vulnerability brought on by too much tihaar exposed them both. Should she have said anything? Was it possible that by making such a bold comment she had ruined this?
Whatever this was.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, her voice thick with emotion. “My intention wasn’t to press, Itzhal, we don’t…” Her words faltered, uncertainty creeping across her face as she tried to find the words to make this right. “I was never good with words,” she muttered, getting to her feet. She moved to the battered table, pouring a glass, if only to do something with her hands, clearly unbothered by the glass that glittered still on the floor beneath her now bare feet.
She drained the drink, feeling the warmth spread instantly through her chest, setting it back on the table, before taking a breath and turning to face him again, the table at her back now.
“I know what it is to lose everything. I know what it is to be consumed so much by revenge that you forget who you are and what you stand for. I know.”
She took a step towards him before stopping, the battle between the tihaar and discipline raging inside her. She wanted to reach for him, to close the distance, but to invade that space without invitation now seemed like a step over boundaries.
“I also know,” she continued, quieter this time, “that if this is the last time I am to walk this galaxy, then I do not want to do it full of fear of what might happen.”
Itzhal waited until the stillness returned, not a dismissal of the words that had come before, but a slow absorption of the facts that mattered. His brow knit in deep contemplation; he stood without the burden of beskar plates, their weight discarded in a pile to the side of the couch, that still left an ache in his shoulders and hips when he dared to look upon them. With a soft sigh, he lowered himself onto the worn, stained couch, its leather exterior scattered with minor rips and tears from the fighting outside.
“You owe me no apology,” he said, long after the quiet had settled, his voice sharp with remembered pain that dragged phantom echos of glass skittering up his throat. She deserved an answer regardless. “I am not blind to the steps we have taken, though, I know not how we stumbled across this journey in the first place. I assure you, I have understood where this route may lead for far longer than the fleeting moments it has taken for me to finally confront the burdens that relentlessly shadow my every step.”
With a tenderness that contrasted with the heaviness in the air, he gestured towards the empty seat beside him, inviting her to join him. “You are wise to look beyond the fears that hound you, to live, rather than merely survive. I cannot be certain if I possess the strength to do the same, but with you by my side, I wish to try.”
The pain in his voice kept her where she was for a moment longer, a powerful wave of anger rolling through her for the people that had hurt him, she let it sit for a moment before taking a breath and letting it go, moving slowly to take the seat beside him, she tucked one leg up underneath her.
“I’m not wise, Itzhal, I am just… tired. In a way I cannot begin to explain and you make me feel…less so.” Her eyes were on her hands that had come to rest in her lap as she felt heat rising in her chest, she forced herself to look up. “I would be a fool to let that go, so here we are.”
She wished very much that she had not left the glass on the table, the need to occupy them, to fidget with something to make it easier to stay put, to fight the urge to run. She could face impossible odds in a war and not flinch, but this? This scared the hell out of her.
“I am sorry, for the loss you have suffered. That pain never truly leaves you.”
“No, it doesn’t,” He admitted. “But I cannot change the past, no matter how much I wish I could.”
His hand hovered in the air between them, lingering in the hesitant gap that felt both shorter and longer than it had before their conversation began. Calloused fingers wrapped in the embrace of his bodysuit, trembled with the cool flush of the air, and the warmth of his skin, caught in a delicate balance between desire and uncertainty, aching to reach out and close the distance—so close, if only he was willing to make the next step.
Slowly, he leaned forward.
“So, here we are.”
Mia couldn't hear anything beyond the rushing of blood in her ears as he leaned closer, tension creeping into her shoulders, subtle but unmistakable. It was automatic, a muscle memory meant for preparation of an attack when someone moved into her personal space. Her body stilled for a beat, slowly registering that this was not an attack, like it was catching up with her brain.
She relaxed but didn't move immediately, sapphire gaze studying him for a long moment reading the trap between want and uncertainty before she shifted, slow and careful her hand lifting to his cheek, thumb caressing weathered skin as she leaned forward to gently rest her forehead against his.
In that moment, time stretched and twisted around them. All the fears and insecurities that had once held them captive were stored away—never gone, but held abay for the moment—leaving only the fragile connection that sparked between their skin. Softly, Itzhal’s lips shaped into a smile, his cheek curving around the firm press of her hand, and the warmth radiating through her body, seeping into him, anchoring both in a moment of vulnerability that cared little for intricate thoughts and only the intuition that bridged the gap between them.
With delicate care, he shifted, slow and methodical, every movement observed by sapphire eyes, his hand lifted towards the back of her neck. His fingers brushed against the short-length of her black locks, thumb caressing the gentle curve of her crown, in a moment of tenderness that surprised even him. Their breaths mingling in the soft space between them, warm and heated, his blood pulsing in a rush that left him almost jittering as his cold blue eyes closed with the slight tilt of his head.
