Private In Quiet Dreams I Walk Alone

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: DREAMLAND
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

His nightmare was never ending. From the moment Srina Talon had taken him on Woostri, Judah Lesan remained a prisoner of his own mind. It was the same thing. Every day he woke up thinking he was finally free and reunited with his wife Katara Starkos. Every day he ignited his lightsaber and extinguished the only light remaining in his life.

She was dead.

He was to blame.

The prison was one of his own mind, guilt, shame, and condemnation. Judah had always blamed himself for the death of his Red, and the Sith Empress had latched onto it. Everything which Judah had ever held dear, the Echani peeled away from him bit by bit. He could feel his anger rising. The desire to lash out and simply end the Dread Queen continued to build. It was just one more battle he had to fight. How easy it would be to give in, but Judah knew the price of it. If he gave in to the anger and the hate, he would fall.

She was not trying to kill him. She was trying to turn him.

There was one thing, one light, one memory, Judah had buried so deep that Srina had yet to find it. Perhaps it was easy to hide because it did not make sense. Why would a criminal and a Jedi be together? In a galaxy which played by the rules it would not even be possible. Perhaps that was the beauty of it. The galaxy rarely played by the conventional rules that sentient life demanded it follow.

Jedi had once denied the power of love. Judah knew why. He had made his fair share of bad decisions when it came to the emotion. Attachment did lead to the dark side. Yet, attachment also led to the light. For the Jedi Shadow, it was what had grounded him.

Malcoma Hesse had become his center.

She was his center.

Judah pushed against the nightmare. He found small cracks on occasion where he could hide from the pain and the torture it caused. His memories of Mal remained undefiled and untouched. The annoyance in her voice when she called him an idiot because it was not registering that she was telling him she wanted to be with him. Judah remembered the way her lips tasted when they shared their first kiss. He had been shocked at how soft they were. His mind replayed the token he gave her before leaving for Woostri.

Red’s necklace.

Judah knew Kat would have wanted Mal to have it. The Shadow was glad Mal had it now. If he did not survive she would at least know what she truly meant to the Jedi. His mind was made up on what he would do the moment he was free. It was something he should have done when he gave Mal the necklace.

For now, Judah let that thought rest as he began to feel the sun on his face. He had retreated deep into a new memory, a dream of what could be. The smell of the forest which surrounded his cabin on Corellia filled his nostrils. Judah stood in the open clearing practicing his katas as he did every morning. Some would call it prayer, the religious Jedi would. For Judah they were simple reminders of life and his friend and partner Cambria Zadira.

He could hear the kettle in the distance. It was his signal to return. Breakfast and tea would be waiting for him by the time he walked in through the door. Judah smiled as the familiar golden locks of his lover came into view.

This was his happy place.

“Hey you…”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

She was wearing a dress he had never seen before, gentle as the golden sun of loving memory, warm and safe but also fleeting. Her face was bare of all but the smallest touches of makeup. Katara's necklace lay against her bare collarbone. Droplets of perfume against her clean skin diffused the notes of gardenia throughout the kitchen on the gentle breeze blowing through the open window, mixing with the faint cedar and citrus of the woods beyond.

This was the way that attachment could lead to the Light.

"Couldn't stay away?" she teased from the counter as she pleated a sheet of lox and arranged it on top a slice of toast smeared with cream cheese. Before he could respond, she turned around with two plates in her hands. Perhaps it was just that he hadn't seen it for weeks—months, maybe—but the brilliance of her smile seemed to rival that of the sun.

"Lucky old me." There was no hint of sultry sarcasm in her voice as she walked over to where Judah sat at the table. A teapot with its cozy sat in the center, and two places had been set with utensils, a napkin, and mugs. Mal set both plates down in their rightful places, but she didn't move to sit beside him. Instead, she reached to pour him a cup of tea.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

And just like that it was gone.

Whatever pain and torture he felt slipped away into the radiance that he found in the smile which Malcoma greeted him with. This was how he fought against the darkness which threatened to consume him.

“This is my house,” he teased.

The scent of gardenia filled the room. It was subtle, but enough that he knew it was there. It drowned out the ever present fragrance of jasmine and rain which was the signature of his captor. Every breath was a reminder of happy times. There were memories associated with the scent that would forever be engrained in his mind. Even now his mind chased the first time he had taken it in. He recalled how her skin felt the first time they were together in an intimate way. Judah relived it all in a moment, and then he was face to face with her smile once more.

Steam from the tea wafted into the air as Judah waited for Mal to finish pouring the cup. There was no reality where the two of them were domesticated, but Judah clung to it. It was a pure wish. As long as he was a Jedi and she clung to her life of crime there would be no true rest or peace for them. It would always be stolen moments and hidden mornings. Judah still held the hope close to his chest. He would not be a Jedi forever.

“Thank you.”

He leaned over and kissed her arm as she pulled the kettle away. The teacup was raised to his lips in the next instant, and he blew across the surface of it to cool the water slightly. He did not mind hot liquid, and tolerated the heat better than most he knew. A cautious sip passed into his mouth before a larger sip followed it. Judah leaned back in the chair and took everything in.

“I should say lucky me,” a happy chuckle and sigh escaped him. “How in the world you ever agreed to keep me around I will never understand.”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

“This is my house.”

She laughed. "Details, details."

She traded his teacup for her chair, easing down into it. As he took a sip of his tea, she did the same for the caf that had been cooling down for her. He leaned back and she leaned towards him, attempting to take one of his hands up in both of hers. If successful, the warmth left in both of their palms mingled. "You're a good man, darling," she told him though he hadn't asked for an answer.

The Mal out there in the galaxy somewhere would never say that aloud, but that didn't mean that she didn't think it, didn't know it, didn't want to say it. It sat in her guarded heart like a caged bird. Judah wasn't flattering himself with this dream, just allowing what could be, what could happen between them, to sweep in as if there were no boundaries and no baggage.

She moved one hand to caresses his cheek. "Good to me. Good to my girls. Good to the galaxy." A hint of a teasing smile again graced her lips. "If anything, I should be wondering why it lets me share you."

The joke dropped from her face. Her smile stayed, morphing into something loving again. "But I know that the same man who leaves me will always come back."

That was a level of trust she had never had before, let alone with a man. Talk about going from near zero all the way to one hundred.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

Good.

Judah shook his head. He knew better. The Jedi had done good things, but that did not make him a good person. His mind was full of memories which would suggest otherwise. There had been too many people he had cheated. Judah had lived on the side of the law Malcoma was overly fond of when he was young, and he had been spending the remainder of his life making up for it.

The kindness he showed to Malcoma’s charges was part of that recompense. He was good to her, and to them, because he had been bad to so many before. She knew of his past. They talked about it. It was why Judah was so connected despite being a Jedi.

He smiled. Though it reached about half its usual height.

“I do try,” he said in response to her observation. "It would be horrid of me to wander off to fight some battle and never come home.”

A bite of toast was taken and chased with a longer sip of his tea. He winked. Judah would always return to her. His mistake with Katara had been allowing the Jedi to keep him for too long before venturing back to their cabin. Even in his retirement he continued to run off. Judah always seemed to have something to owe the galaxy, and in the end it had meant he was not there when Katara passed.

He had never expected to truly find himself happy again. Malcoma of all people was the type of person he ever expected to find happiness with. They were an odd match, and the most unlikely of pairings. It was still a secret to most, one which Damris did his best to help hide. In some ways Judah felt bad for putting her attendant in that kind of position, but aside from the Jedi, he was the most loyal man Mal had in her life.

“And I am trying. I am fighting so hard.”

Judah closed his eyes. The pain tried pressing in once more. When they opened his eyes focused on the necklace he had given her.

“It looks good on you, like it belongs there. Red would be happy.”

There was something else on the tip of his tongue, but Judah let it settle for now.

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

She waited until he had a bit of breakfast to argue with him, and, even still, it was more of a challenge that a spirited disagreement.

"You are, Judah."

Good, that was.

She knew he was trying and fighting just as she knew why he pulled away from her compliment. He lessened it, but not the reality that supported it like the solid foundation beneath then did this house.

"We're not our past or our future," she said with a squeeze of his hand. "We're our present."

He had said as much to her in different ways over the years they had known each other, but she wasn't just parroting his words back to him. Though she had once thought as much to be pathetic, she had come to believe him over time. And if she was beginning to see that her worth stretched past the horizon of her past like a sunrise blooming in pastels, she would make him see his too, and behold it alongside him.

Her hand pulled back from Judah's to touch the silver pendant at her neck. She was still in awe of it, and that he had given it to her, but appreciation wasn't the only emotion that it invoked. It was a little wonder, yes, but it also was like a little wool scapular: uncomfortable, but necessary in that discomfort.

"It's beautiful...like she was."

Her tone didn't suggest that she was lying about either part, though her hesitance to say the second surely meant something.

That something rested on Mal's tongue too, but further back on the muscle as if it were afraid of the light of day. Of the Light of the Force—his Force. It weighed down into the bottom of her mouth, nesting into her lower jaw.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

She knew he was good, and her reassurance was something Red often found herself giving as well. Judah struggled with practicing the advice he gave to others. In many ways he had convinced himself that it applied to others when it could not apply to him. Mal could be the recipient of mercy offered by grace. Judah had to earn it.

Naturally he smiled, focusing more on the fact Malcoma had never tossed his own words back at him before.

“Sounding more and more like a Jedi, my dear.”

Banter, it was their native tongue. It was what had drawn him to her. Judah had always found the banter with her came easy, and she never misunderstood it to be more than the humor it was. Sure, there was some flirtation mixed with it as well, but one look at Malcoma and anyone would have thought Judah a fool for not trying at least once.

He sighed when she touched the necklace. Judah knew it was an awkward thing to just give her the necklace Kat had worn. The Jedi was sure that Mal was aware of what Judah was trying to express with the gift. Even if he had told her to hold onto it until he got back. He would be lying if there was not a small amount of guilt for asking her to hold onto it, or giving it to her. That was something that belonged to him and Red, but Judah was saying so much more with the action.

Judah wanted Malcoma to know where she stood with him. Maybe it had been too subtle.

“We didn’t believe in rings. I would have had to hide mine all the time so just exchanged tokens. That necklace… that was my wedding ring from her you could say…”

Judah was getting there, and for a Jedi that often faced the worst of the darkside, he was acting like a coward now. Maybe it was because he knew he was dreaming, but still… If he couldn’t say it in a dream he would never say it in person.

He drank the rest of his tea quickly and then took Mal’s hand back if she would let him.

“Mal… Marry me?”

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

Her breath softly hitched as he explained the significance of the necklace.

Was the fluttering that had started in her stomach excited or dreadful anticipation?

Like many conversations in her life, she knew where this one was going, but she let him continue on—maybe with the hope that she was wrong.

He was able to take her hand, still with disbelief.

But she wasn't wrong. He asked her to marry her. Even as his mental apparition, she blinked.

"Judah...I..."

She trailed off as language slipped through her mind like sand through a sieve. It didn't matter if he spoke to fill the ensuing silence or let it consume the room for a little longer; she only spoke again in her own time. When she did, it felt like pulling a question word by word up her raw throat. Her voice cracked under the decompression pressure.

"Do you really..." Her brow knit. "...love me like you loved her?"

They hadn't used that word in each other's company before, not in any context, least of all their unique relationship. And now Mal had used it twice in one breath.

She felt fuzzy. This felt wrong. This felt right.

She couldn't be sure.

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: CORELLIA
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

Judah had expected Mal to be shocked. They had never discussed marriage, nor did Judah think it was something she had ever considered. What they had was already meaningful without the formality of such a serious statement of commitment. Yet, here Judah was asking her to make it anyway.

When she blinked, Judah knew he'd taken her by surprise, even if she was smart enough to know where he was going. There was no reason to explain what the necklace had been if the question wasn't going to come at some point.

"Like I loved her…" his brow quirked as he raised the final word to indicate he was asking a question.

Judah just smiled. Mal may have caught the small chuckle under his breath too. Her response was as typical a Malcoma reaction as Judah could have anticipated. He didn't like that she compared herself to his late wife, but that had to be expected to a degree. Her memory still lingered all over the cabin, and Judah had been honest with Mal about his dreams. She knew part of him wanted to give up and just be one with the force. Katara kept telling him not yet.

Mal and the girls needed him, and in truth, Judah needed them too.

He needed Mal.

"I love you! You idiot."

Judah sighed softly as he repeated the words she said to him all those moons ago when she told him she wanted to be with him. He stood from his seat and walked the three steps to reach her chair.

"I am already with you Mal, that's not going to change, and I'm not looking for a replacement. Whatever I have left in this life I want to spend it with you. Jedi be damned if that's what it means…"

The Jedi smiled and kissed the top of her head.

"This is my way of telling you you're the most important part of my life by any measure you can think of, and I want a life with you."

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

"I didn't mean it like that," she said, battling the defensiveness that wanted to wiggle its way into her tone, especially as he turned her words back onto her and she caught his little chuckle. She knew that he didn't feel the same way about her as he had and still did feel about Katara. It would be a lie to say that she was alright with that, but still she had managed to make to make an uneasy truce with that reality. Mal's struggle wasn't about either Judah or his late wife; it was about herself.

"I just..."

She felt like she was doing something wrong being with Judah. And she was, surely, as far as the Family or the Jedi were concerned, if they knew, but she didn't mind that. What she did mind, and what lost her more sleep than she'd like to admit, dwelt on a moral level. She had taught herself to ignore this particular level early into her career as it was necessary to do business in the way she chose to.

Enter the lives of powerful men, most of whom were married. Play the other woman for as long as it took to lower their guard and manipulate the situation to get what she wanted.

The comparison wasn't fair to anyone, least of all herself. Of that, she was vaguely aware but made the connection anyway.

Kat wasn't quite alive and everything Mal knew about her suggested that whatever yet existed of her longed for Judah to be happy.

That was love. The desire for another to be happy, even without you.

Mal shifted nervously in her chair as he approached her, eyes downcast. Embarrassment was a dusty dress she rarely wore.

What she wanted to know was if he loved her in a similar way to how he loved Kat: a similar enough way to propose marriage.

He didn't have to speak from her to know. All he had to do was kiss the top of her head.

Nothing felt wrong anymore. The butterflies in her stomach multiplied, their wings blowing away her doubts. They would certainly creep back later, but for now, the only emotion swelling in her was love. For him. For herself. For them together.

"Yes..." she said softly—oh so very softly. "Yes, Judah, yes."

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

Judah did not answer right away.

For a moment he simply stood there, the word yes still settling through him as though it had weight, as though it were something alive that needed time to find its place in his chest. He felt it spread slowly, filling spaces he had long ago learned to keep quiet, places that had carried memory and loss in equal measure.

Then he laughed, soft at first, almost disbelieving, before the sound warmed into something fuller.

He stepped closer, hands finding hers with a familiarity that felt both effortless and fiercely precious, as though he understood on some instinctive level that moments like this were never guaranteed.

“I was hoping that would be your answer,” he admitted, the corner of his mouth lifting.

The air carried the scent of tea and sun-warmed stone, the gentle hush of a world that asked nothing of him except to be present. Somewhere nearby, leaves stirred in a breeze he could almost feel against his skin. It would have been easy to let himself forget everything beyond this small, perfect pocket of peace.

Because beneath the warmth there was pressure.

It was not enough to shatter the moment, not enough to pull him away, but there all the same. A faint tension at the edge of perception, like the distant rumble of thunder beyond clear skies. The Force pressed against his awareness in slow, deliberate pulses, as though testing the boundaries of what he was holding together.

He did not look toward it.

Instead, Judah lifted her hands slightly between them, studying the simple reality of the moment with quiet reverence.

“I don’t take this lightly,” he said, voice steady. “Not you. Not this.”

There was no need to explain what he meant. The truth lived in the way his fingers tightened gently around hers, in the softness that settled behind his eyes without dimming their clarity.

A faint chill brushed along the back of his thoughts, subtle as breath across glass. The sunlight seemed to hesitate for the briefest instant, shadows stretching just a fraction longer than they should before easing back into place.

Judah drew a slow breath.

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

If words had aftertastes, the flavor of yes would still coat her tongue in tres leches, sweet and rich. She looked up at her hands as Judah raised them, then past them into his eyes. She witnessed the reverence for this, for her, that shown through his whole body.

Then she witnessed something interrupt it for the shortest moment.

Somehow, her presence that already seemed ethereal not only physically but emotionally via the grounding that her memory represented for him, seemed to soften further. "All's well, baby," she cooed, squeezing his hands back. There was gentle, knowing weight in the pet name she had never used for him before.

"You're free here." Her fingers exerted a bit more pressure, steady and sure. "I've got you."

Judah Lesan​

 

[Judah Lesan]

LOCATION: WOOSTRI
WEARING: This | TAG: Malcoma Hesse​

Her form flickered. The room almost seemed to go static around him. Darkness pressed in, and then in a moment it was gone. Mal squeezed his hand, the memory of her he had pieced together in his mind. He knew this was really her, but this was what grounded him. This was his retreat and refuge.

"I know."

Judah closed his eyes and held onto the grip tightly.

"It's getting harder and harder to stay, Mal. I'm afraid she's going to figure out where I've been hiding.”

He opened his eyes and looked at her intently.

"Don't let go."

 

[Malcoma Hesse]

"Never."

Another thing about Mal was that she rarely made promises and, when she did, she considered them very carefully. Though she projected the impression of being in control of her life, she knew that, in the grand scheme of it, she barely was. And because of that she also knew that she wouldn't always be able to keep her promises—not to her girls, not to Damris, not even to herself.

But this one, she'd die to keep for Judah.

"It's not about where you hide it, baby. She can take whatever else she wants, but she can't take your love for me."

Her gaze hardened.

Mal almost always hid the more sadistic side of her mobster persona around Judah. This would be one of the first glimpses her had ever gotten of it. It didn't just appear when she was ordering the torture of men and women who may or may not have been deserving, but also when she was defending someone very important to her, especially when they were cornered.

Like a Kath hound bearing its fangs and waiting for an opportune moment to pounce.

"You stay here." It was close to an order, falling just shy of one. "I'm the woman of this house now. She can get out."

Judah Lesan​