Private Avoidance and Confrontation

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Irina Jesart​

Time had passed, but it had not softened anything, and it rarely did. What it had done was remove the immediacy of the moment and leave everything else where it fell, and nothing about it had become easier to understand, only harder to ignore.

Aerik had not avoided that, even when it would have been easier to.

The days that followed had been filled with preparation and expectation, and departure was no longer something he could put off. It sat with him now in a way it had not before, tied into everything else in a way that did not leave much room to separate one from the other, including what had happened between them.

He had promised her they would talk, not to quiet the moment and not to delay it, but because he had meant it, and that alone had been enough to determine where he would be.

The maze had not changed, and the hedges were still kept with the same precision, their walls grown high and thick enough to turn you without ever fully closing you in, while each path narrowed just enough to force a decision before opening again.

Aerik entered and followed a path he already knew, his steps steady against the packed earth as the scent of trimmed greenery and damp soil lingered in the air around him. The turns came and went without hesitation, taken the same way they always had been, without pause and without second thought.

By the time the center opened around him, there was nothing in his pace to suggest it had needed to be found.

The space there remained open, shaped more by absence than design, where the hedges curved back just enough to leave a quiet pocket at the heart of it, and he stepped into it and came to a stop as the stillness settled around him without interruption.

A faint breeze moved through the maze and carried the cool of evening with it, stirring the leaves just enough to give them voice before letting them fall still again, and it brushed across his skin without drawing any reaction as it passed.

He did not reach for the bond. Aerik knew she would come when he had sent the invitation to meet at their spot.

Something shifted in the quiet that did not belong to the wind, and it came before movement and before anything he could see, settling into something familiar as it drew closer.

Her heartbeat carried through the stillness, steady and measured, and it stood apart from everything else around them once he allowed himself to listen for it.

Aerik did not turn.

“I can hear you.”

The words carried across the space between them in a low and even tone, and they settled into the quiet without breaking it.

“I told you we would talk.”

He did not look toward her or move to close the distance between them, because the last time he had done that it had not remained simple, and that had not been forgotten.

“I leave tomorrow.”

 

[Irina Jesart]

Cool evening air kissed her shoulders as she followed the familiar path, one they used to steal along in the dark of night, avoiding the steps of the academy’s guards for risk of punishment for being out beyond their curfew. It was the one place that they had been able to be just Aerik and Rin, no expectations, no masks. Just two kids escaping the realities of what lay ahead of them.

The last time they had been here, her father had been alive.

That thought brought a weight on her chest that she didn’t want, something she shoved down hard, focusing instead on the invitation, a smile curving her lips. She closed the force around her, shrinking herself as small as possible, her steps on the gravel path suddenly light and silent as she approached the mazes centre.

“I can hear you.”

Irina pouted. Giving up her attempt at sneaking up on him, coming to a stop behind him.

“Cheat.”

“I told you we would talk.”

He didn’t turn, the seriousness in his tone made her still. She had asked him to promise and she trusted him to keep his word, but now the moment was here, she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any of it. She swallowed, stepping forward to close the gap, her head coming to rest between his shoulder blades as he hands moved to slide around his middle.

She didn’t answer him immediately, using the embrace as a moment to still the sudden race of her thoughts before she let out a sigh.

“I know.”

The admission was a whisper, that carried her sorrow at the distance that would be between them again. Her hands slipped to his waist as she drew back, moving around him, her dark eyes searching his face for a moment before she let her hands fall away.

“Where would you like to start?”

Aerik Lechner

 

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Irina Jesart​

“Cheat.”

Aerik grinned, the expression slight as it pulled at one side of his mouth.

“It’s not cheating if I come by it naturally. It’s biology, not technology or even the Force.”

She would hear the jest in his voice, even if it carried truth with it. The maze held the sound easily, the hedges softening it as the breeze moved through them, stirring the leaves just enough to give them a quiet, constant presence without ever breaking the stillness around them.

A breath passed before he spoke again, and this time his voice settled lower, more measured.

“You have never been able to keep your heart quiet.”

There was more to it than the rhythm he could hear. She had never hidden from him. Whether that had been by choice or because she simply could not, he had always known where she stood, even when distance had been the easier path to take. That distance had not been fair to her, or to them, but it had been his to choose.

Those reasons had not changed.

A quiet exhale left him as her arms came around his midsection, the contact grounding and unwelcome all at once. The breeze shifted again, cooler now as it slipped between them and carried the scent of damp soil and trimmed greenery with it. When her head rested against his back, the weight of what needed to be said pressed in closer, even as the familiarity of her presence threatened to dull it.

She was going to ask about Skadi.

Her words from before had not left him. He had accused her of jealousy, of fearing something that had already taken shape, and she had not argued. She had accepted it. That had been worse.

It was not fair, and he knew it, but that did not make it untrue. Skadi stood beside him in ways Irina did not, in proximity and in purpose, and that closeness carried its own weight. Still, what had passed between him and Irina the night before had not been something he could dismiss or set aside. That had been different. It had been building long before either of them chose to acknowledge it.

Irina had always been just out of reach. Not distant enough to be gone, but never close enough to remain. Time with her had never been something he could rely on, and what they had taken from the night before had not changed that.

His gaze met hers when she moved in front of him, and the question was already there before she spoke it. There had been a moment where he could have avoided it, where he could have shifted it into something else, but that had never been what they agreed to.

“You know I would rather just not start.”

The truth, left as it was.

They had promised that much.

His eyes dropped briefly to her shoulder, to the place where the scar rested beneath fabric, unseen but not forgotten. It had been his fault. That had not faded with time any more than anything else between them had.

Aerik swallowed and drew a breath, steadying it before it could turn into something else.

“You have been wanting to ask a question for a long time. Since Dromund Kaas.”

His gaze returned to hers, and this time it held.

“Ask.”

 

[Irina Jesart]

He was not the only one who did not want to start, after everything that had transpired between them now she didn’t want to hear any of it. She wanted to hold on to the illusion that there was nothing beyond the hedge that rustled in the breeze, that the only thing to matter in the galaxy was them and nothing could threaten that or bring it under strain.

It was a childish notion. Aerik would never be entirely hers, Rin already knew that, it would be up to her to manage the pain and jealousy that that brought. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her mouth dry. She did want to ask, but she was so afraid of the answer…

She dropped her gaze and took a breath stealing herself before she looked back up. Whatever the answer, she wanted to see the truth in his face.

“Do you love her?”

Aerik Lechner

 

[Aerik Lechner]

Wearing: This | Weapons: Lightsaber | Knife
TAG: Irina Jesart​

Of all the questions Irina could ask, the one she chose was not what Aerik had been expecting. It settled between them heavier than it should have, not because it was complicated, but because it was not something he could answer cleanly.

Did he love Skadi?

The maze held the question in place. The breeze moved through the hedges again, slower now, brushing along the leaves before fading, and nothing about the space around them shifted enough to break what followed.

No answer came.

The silence stretched.

Skadi was his partner. They had trained together, moved together, learned each other in ways that did not need to be spoken. For a time she had lived in his space, and that closeness had become something steady, something that did not require thought.

And still…

He would be lying if he said he had not thought about being with her.

“Rin…”

The name came easier than anything else, but it did not carry an answer with it. His gaze drifted from hers, not to avoid it, but because holding it made the question harder to leave where it was.

The night air settled against him, cool and steady, and it remained there as he tried to find something that did not unravel what they had just managed to hold together.

His mind returned to his recovery, to the words he had given them when he did not have the strength to weigh them.

He had told Irina he loved her.

He had told Skadi he needed her.

Neither had been a lie.

Skadi had been clear in return. She had offered to step back if there was something with Irina, or if that was what was wanted. That was the part that did not sit right. There had been no desire to push her away. Losing what she was to him had never been something he wanted.

She was part of what he had built for himself, whether that had been the intention or not.

“I don’t know. It’s like I said already. I need her.”

The words came quieter than intended, but they held.

His gaze dropped to Irina’s shoulder, settling where he knew the scar was, and held there longer than it should have. The glow behind his eyes shifted with it, the heat settling deeper rather than rising.

“And so do you.”

Nothing in the words softened what stood between them.

Aerik knew what he had done to her. Irina, Skadi, and Torvald had all lied to him anyway, and when he asked what happened they chose not to tell him and let him believe something else. That was not nothing.

Anger flashed sitting just behind his eyes even as the rest of him stayed still.

For all of it, he did not move.

What they had shared the night before was still there, and he was not walking away from it.