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Connor stepped down, passing two Ren in good spirits. Obviously they had heard the news. He was here for Ara, Knight of Ren, however, before she did something stupid.
The last time he had seen her, properly, was leaving the Bastion feeling angry and hurt. Then, thrown together on Mustafar. Injured in the line of duty; grief over their lost comrades. There was a horrible gap between Virgillia and Monastery and he had to find out what it was.
He skidded to a halt before a spaceport officer and Lotus youth conversing and handing over paperwork.
"That transport before mine, where did they go? Where did you send them?"
The youth turned and bowed slightly.
"Transport TK-421 was assigned to the First Order, and those inside..."
"I know that, but where did those inside go?"
"Sir," he said with a smile, "that information is classi - "
Connor snatched the paperwork from his feeble thin fingers and glanced quickly on two sides. Ren, Ara. Evermore Apartments. That was enough. He stuffed the papers back in his hands, not clocking his confused face and made off out of the spaceport.
The Evermore Apartments were a basic block by the spaceport for those staying over for business or convenience. No frills, no glitz. Just a basic service for a fair price. If Ara had given that block, then she wasn't staying long.
She was planning something, and hopefully Connor would find her before anything, or anyone, else did and tip her over the edge.
She’d left Monastery quickly and without much fanfare. Her things had been gathered, a message sent to [member="Kaalia Voldaren"] , and a transport secured. She’d said she was going home, but was the Bastion truly home? Instead, the knight had found her way to Avalonia, the capital of First Order Space and somewhere far enough to give her space to think and regroup.
Her arms were still bandaged to the elbows, the skin beneath bright pink and covered in thin white marks that would, hopefully, fade with time. The cave-in they’d created had taken its toll on her arms, as had the explosive bullets fired at them from the Jedi who’d sought to expel the Ren from Vader’s Castle.
The corners of her mouth turned up in a smile as she remembered the elated feeling that news of their victory against the Alliance had brought. They’d been rescued, taken to Monastery, and healed…even if they’d almost lost one of their own along the way.
Ara had been lucky. A few scrapes from blaster fire, the damaged skin of her forearms, and a small cut on her cheek were the extent of her injuries. Her lungs had taken a beating due to the prolonged exposure to the chemicals and heat in the air on the planet, but even they were healing. And so she’d left.
Too much had happened in the past week or so. The invasion of Mustafar. The trip to Kro Var. The trip to Coruscant. The confrontation with [member="Connor Harrison"] and her subsequent walking away.
No, she wouldn’t dwell on that evening, it was over and done. Decisions had been made and repercussions had. They’d fought beside each other on the fiery planet that had seen the birth of Lord Vader, they’d survived and brought glory to the Order. It was enough.
Her armor needed to be repaired before she considered anything else, a trip into Avalonia the first thing on her list for the following day. Dropping the torn and mostly destroyed garment on one of the extra chairs in her small room, she paced the carpet, for a few moments her mind everywhere and nowhere.
A knock on the door grabbed her attention, the Knight moving to the panel and punching a simple three-digit code to unlock it without thinking. Surprised by the speed of the room service she’d ordered upon arriving, she didn’t bother with the usual precautions of searching her surroundings for force auras or signatures, she was deep in First Order territory with no reason to fear. The metal slid open, her amber-ringed emerald eyes locking onto familiar blue ones, the last person she’d expected to find standing in front of her.
It hadn’t been too hard to locate Ara once inside the apartment black a stone’s throw from the smallest spaceport in Avalonia. A low-level room on the East Wing. Connor made his way down the plain silver corridor out of the lobby area to find her room as he thought about what to say. What not to say. Where to start.
There was their confrontation at Virgillia, and then the invasion on top of that. The pair of them, and the Ren as a whole, had acted as one unit with a single goal which had quickly been deemed a victory with Alliance forces withdrawing and evacuating the system. Inside burnt a silent pride; his risks and decisions had paid off for the greater good.
Beyond duty, however, was the person. He wasn’t a slave to any Order, and duty would not dictate his life. Or so he told himself over and over.
It was the smaller lasting effects he would have to now worry about. Never mind the breathing; his lungs weren’t permanently damaged and fresh air was continuing to help flush out the toxins. As for his eyes? They were scratchy, and his scar was irritated, but he could see, but it was necessary to blink a little more to help protect and clean them. A few other scrapes that would fade in time.
As for Ara – where did they stand? He didn’t really know before Virgillia, and now he certainly didn’t. Well, he did. There was nothing to fight for. It had happened just as expected, and the brief moment of fantasy and greed had given them both something they wanted, and now the future beckoned. It was scary for her, and also for him to want to admit he wanted something more.
It was clear to him she didn’t, and he wasn’t going to –
The door opened.
"Ara,"
He didn’t even realise he had knocked, deep in thought and processing it all before she was there, a cut on her cheek on an otherwise flawless face and gauze on her forearms. To think, he could have killed them all with his actions.
"Why did you come here of all places?"
Of all the first questions to ask, he blurted out one of the least interesting but most confusing for him to understand. She could have fled to any sector in First Order space or to Virgillia – but why here?
Of all the questions he could ask, that was not the one she expected.
What had she expected?
Moving away from the doorway, she politely motioned him in, thinking over his question. Why did she come here? Somehow she doubted he was asking about her choice of hotels, more than likely he was reasoning out her reasons for coming to Avalonia instead of returning to the Bastion.
”My pilot suggested it.”
Letting the humor leak into her voice, she moved to the mini-bar that all hotel rooms that catered to travelers seemed to include. Her brandy of choice was nowhere to be found, unsurprisingly, so instead she retrieved a few small bottles of unidentified alcohol. After everything they’d endured, they could survive a few sips of an unknown beverage.
Turning back to face him with the bottle and two glasses in hand, she raised an eyebrow in question before pouring two glasses of amber liquid. Saluting him with her glass, she sat on the edge of the bed in the center of the room, leaving the extra chair for Connor to sit in should he wish.
”My armor needs repairing. Since I purchased it here, it seemed the best place to look into having it fixed.”
It was the simplest answer, and a truthful one, but did it answer his question? She took a sip of the liquid in her glass, bursting into a coughing fit as the fire of alcohol burned her still irritated esophagus. Perhaps drinking so soon after their experience on Mustafar was a bad idea. Setting the glass down roughly on the table, she took a moment to gather herself, the coughing subsiding as the drink cleared her system.
”Maybe that wasn’t the best decision.”
Eyes sparkling with a bit of mirth, she smiled, letting him know without words that she was okay. The drink hadn’t done any serious damage.
Why was he here? Had he followed her from monastery? So many questions, but none of them voiced. Instead, she waited.
Walking into the room a few feet behind Ara, he glanced around at the basic room. There was nothing of hers here bar what she had brought from the Lotus brigade. This was literally a stop gap. The sound of engines roared outside to break the silence and the large long window rattled gently.
Looking back in time to see Ara nearly wretch and cough up her lungs on the drink, he glanced down at his own glass with distain and picked it up. Walking to the small kitchenette, he tipped it down the sink and placed the glass gently down.
"Classy," he muttered.
Connor walked back into the lounge and stood, looking down at her. He felt disgusted. Not all with her, but with the Ren as a whole right now.
"Did you see them all in that ward back on the Lotus planet? They were acting like children. YOU slip away and resort to drink because it's, what? Tough? Look at you." He shook his head and shifted to lean in. "For once, I'm embarrassed to side with the Ren after that performance. Embarrassed. It was like watching a bunch of angsty Padawans having a strop."
He glared at her, and the engine was far from gone and it was silent for too long.
"Where did you go after Virgillia. It was nearly a week before we were called to arms. What did you do."
This was Connor at his best. Direct. Blunt. Truthful. To the point.
Watching him pour his drink down the drain and the muttered comment made her want to drink the foul liquid just to spite him. She compromised with herself, taking a sip from the glass, watching him over the rim with an analytical stare. This time the trail of fire was expected and she managed the sip without so much as a twitch, even if the taste of the beverage left much to be desired.
He didn’t bother to hide his disgust, his tone conveying as much as his words. The knight let him rant, another sip of alcohol her only movement while he spoke. He leaned in, his glare meeting her cool and unimpressed expression. It was a scare tactic, meant to intimidate by robbing the target of their physical space. She let him, staying perfectly still on the edge of the bed, glass in one bandaged hand, the other across her lap.
His words angered her, the automatic reaction to defend her actions and to point him to the door if he was as embarrassed as he claimed to be. Instead she just focused on him with those eyes, one eyebrow raised.
Leaning past him, she set the half-finished glass of alcohol on the table beside the twin chairs. Was that the true reason behind his ire, her disappearance after their argument? Moving off the bed and around him, she pushed aside the curtains in front of the window, staring out at the busy city and spaceport, glad for anything to focus on except the man in the room with her.
”Is that why you followed me? To ask where I went?”
Turning just enough to watch him from the corner of her vision, the light from the window bouncing off her long hair.
Ara moved to the window to distract herself either from the underlying truth in his words, or the detest she felt for him.
"You’re a loose cannon on deck."
He stayed still, only accentuating words with the slight movement of a hand.
"I don’t care where you went or what you did, but days before we leave as a unit to take a system, you wander off. Why? Were you sulking?"
Connor sighed, his hand dropping and he his head turning, knowing he was probably getting nowhere – but where did he even want this to go? Was he lecturing her? Telling her off? Drumming sense into her as he had much more experience and world-weary knowledge as she?
"Well?" He took a breath. "You want to push everyone away, then fine. Go off on these little voyages, shrug off concern and then drink yourself stupid and hide behind your come-to-bed eyes and smile. You’re so close to it becoming as easy as breathing."
Her spine straightened, turning to face him, eyes crackling with anger.
”You don’t care? Then why are you here, Connor? Why are you standing in some run-down rented room, hunting down a Knight who wandered off as you like to call it.”
Those eyes sparkled with anger and…something else. Her stomach twisted as an array of emotions washed over her, anger, sadness, frustration, a cocktail that seemed present any time she was in the presence of [member="Connor Harrison"] .
”Push everyone away?”
Stepping away from the window, her voice curled and dipped, the sultry tone that always creeped in when she was angry.
”I am not the one who walked away out of fear that what we had was not what he wanted. I am not the one who pushed for so much and then did nothing when it was given to him.”
Each word brought her a step closer until they were a few feet apart, the distance as great as the emotional divide between them. She’d given him everything he’d asked for: her trust, herself, even her name. Kark, she’d almost died for him, for all of them, on Mustafar. Why was it never enough for any of them? For him?
”You say you do not care, but you do. You are afraid, Connor. More afraid than I ever was. More afraid than I am. Because I am strong enough to survive the fallout…are you?”
He wanted to know where she’d been? She’d been to the ends of herself and back, all to seal up the crack in her armor, to do exactly what he accused her of, push them away. But life never worked the way you wanted it. Coruscant had been a wake-up call. She’d seen her future if she continued on this path and she couldn’t stand the mirror image of herself within her mother.
Standing there, glare locked with his, she felt the bond between them snap and pulse with power and potential. They’d made an amazing team on Mustafar, the pair able to protect Samka and the Order, even if the Jedi had stopped the flow of information. Which one of them was to blame for the distance that stopped them from being more, being better?
The girl who never showed her true self, who laughed and teased to protect her heart, or the man who wanted everything, but pushed everyone away from fear when they started to give it to him.
His eye twitched, he went to say something but stopped himself. Instead, he steeled his jaw, breathed a little harder through the nose and shifted his weight on his legs trying not to fidget or lash out. Fingers were tight in the left fist, and loose in the right.
"I don’t care about your private adventure. I care why you vanish from your unit days before an invasion and nobody knew where you were. That sort of thing makes you look like a child."
He swallowed.
"And don’t you dare call me afraid. I am afraid of nothing. Not even you. Us. The Ren. The Jedi. I am beyond it all. I have survived everything I should be afraid of, and now I am beyond that. When I waste my time fighting for people like you to flourish, and they just hide away and drink and…whatever the hell you do. It’s a joke. The Ren are a joke and you can’t even see it and to hell with me being a joke too in the eyes of the galaxy. No way."
A sharp breath drew in, fighting his rising emotion and he stepped back, trying to calm himself.
"Leave me alone, Ara. Don’t… talk to me, or look for me. Just do what you need to do and when you end up dead in a gutter somewhere then you’ll wish you’d have listened to me…."
He was done with it all. He knew where the door was, and the spaceport was close enough. Turning to go, he cast a look outside again and hoped he’d never look at the face of Ara Ren again.
She was about to lash out, his words fanning the flames inside her. How dare he call them a joke, call them weak. The darkness swirling inside her craved release, the same way it always did, the same violent urges she always resorted to. Nothing ever changed in her world. People came, they used, they took, and they left.
The few feet between them felt like a million lightyears, a distance that couldn’t be bridged by words.
She watched as he tried to calm himself, her eyes flashing with ire at the move. How very…Jedi of him. Pushing away the emotions he harbored rather than letting them out, giving in to the power they brought.
”Then why did you come looking for me?”
She whispered it quietly as he walked by, no joking tone, no laughter, just a simple statement. He could push her away, he could tell her he didn’t care, but actions spoke louder than words. Actions and the bond between them that was straining so hard it was nearly breaking.
He could lie to himself. She could lie to herself. They could lie to each other. But the truth was still there, eating away at both of them.
She’d sworn to herself that she wouldn’t be her mother, but here she was, repeating the mistakes of a drug-addled woman with no care for anyone but herself. And now Ara was poised to do the same. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t become that person.
A sheen of amber rolled over her eyes, eyes that held the weight of every betrayal, every abandonment, every turning point in her life, all come to a head. She’d left Monastery to think, to decide what her future held, and now it was coming at her full-speed, with no chance to swerve.
She did the only thing she could. One hand jutting out, a wall of power holding the door firmly shut against his attempt to leave. The part of her brain that screamed at her to let him go, let him leave, shut firmly off, the Knight moving forward faster than she could imagine, one hand wrapping around his neck, the other across his cheek, pulling his face down to hers.
Tears fell, the sting of salt on her wound a minor irritant compared to the shards of ice coming from her gut.
I knock the ice from my bones
Try not to feel the cold
Caught in the thought of that time
When everything was fine, everything was mine
Everything was fine, everything was mine
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
His words echoed in her brain, a secret fear he’d shared unwittingly, anger bleeding through.
Run with my hands on my eyes
Blind, but I'm still alive
Free to go back on my own
But is it still a home when you're all alone
Is it still a home when you're all alone
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
If that is what you truly want, I will go. But I am not like her, whoever she was.
Tearing the connection open between them, she let him in, her grief, pain, anger, and fear overcoming her logic and pride. The trip to Coruscant, and her choices, laid bare. She’d chosen him, them, over pride. Over anger. Over fear.
There is a reason I'm still standing
I never knew if I'd be landing
And I will run fast, outlast
Everyone that said no…
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put me back together again
The kiss ended, her tears still falling from eyes that burned. She waited, waited for the fallout. He could walk away or he could accept this. There was nothing else she could do.
He walked from the window to the door and felt a breeze past him. The door seemed to swell and lock shut without any physical touch. Gritting his teeth, Connor flared and span around to confront Ara, but she was on him.
Not to hit him, to choke him, but to kiss him and re-connect that waning Force bond and connection they had forged that very first day on Avalonia. It wasn’t a hunger for passion, sex or lust – it was a kiss that was hard, but soft and full of hope and promise and sorrow.
Connor felt his body pull back a second, but felt her tears roll down his face, and saw a future of pain and heartache caused before he’d even given them a chance. So many times had he pushed everything and everyone out who got close, and that resorted in a nightmare that lasted for an eternity. The bad dream never went.
So, rather than add another guilt to his mind, another wasted chance, sighed into the kiss and wrapped one arm around her back. Then, the other. He held her tight as the kiss parted, but their intimacy only grew.
His head fell down to her shoulder and he held on as if she was falling. He wanted to cry in relief and frustration, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t let himself. So he thought. Moist eyes of tears and blood were ignored as he inhaled her scent and felt her heart beat and her warmth.
The vision on Virgillia had been dangerously close to reality on Mustafar, and all he could do was watch and trust the Force. So close, but so far apart. Ever since their urges took over on the shore, things hadn’t been the same. An admission of weakness for them both that they had tried to ignore and pass of as just that – weakness.
It wasn’t weakness. It was real, and it was human. It was what made them stronger.
"Don’t leave me," he said into her. "Don’t ever leave me."
He could stay in this embrace forever, and nothing else right now mattered. He had Ara who would be the rock he needed, and the reason to fight and progress and learn; to fuel their journey through the Dark Side to rise through and be leaders. Leaders, and so much more if he remembered how he felt right now – he felt safe.
She felt him start to pull away, the shards of ice collected in her gut shifting, hardening, even as tears kept falling.
Her brain rallied at her, yelling about her stupidity in attachment and hope that had long been buried. Power hadn’t protected her. When she’d joined the Ren, standing on that rooftop with Samka and Isla staring back at her, she’d claimed she wanted a place to belong, something to fight for, to bring order to the galaxy.
Having been given that chance, she’d wasted it. Wasted the last few months on trusting the Ren, dedicating herself to their cause and their ways. She knew their names and their faces, had forged bonds she didn’t even realize existed. She would have died for them, almost had died for them in the catacombs, and now it would all be thrown back into her face from a man she’d brought into the Ren herself. The man she’d found wandering the streets of Avalonia searching for a place to belong much like she had.
Wanting a place to belong but not allowing yourself to do so…that was her curse. Would always be her curse. One passed down from mother to daughter. Selfishness and fear, their two guiding emotions coupled with addiction.
His arms wrapped around her back even as she started to pull away, his head finding her shoulder. How long they stood there, waiting for the moment the other broke, waiting for the anger and the tide to sweep them both away again, she didn’t know. Fear seeped into the bond between them, his fear, flashes of the vision she’d once subjected him to and another viewpoint of the catacombs as she faced off against the purple-eyed Jedi. Closing her eyes, she leaned against him as well, one hand still holding his neck, the other wrapping around his shoulders.
”I am not the one who was walking away again, Connor.”
It was a tease, her light tone and the slight tightening of her embrace meant to reassure him. They were both far too vulnerable to endure the normal bickering and bantering they had before, but she needed some sense of normality for one moment.
For all his claims of wanting her, wanting to be with her, he’d pulled away from fear while she hadn’t given them a chance to try. Their fears and scars had pushed them so far apart that they almost drowned.
I won’t.
Thoughts could be formed when words couldn’t and she let the thought hang between them. She had chosen this. Him. Them. Chosen to care as she had chosen her name, her fate, her home.
And if she ended up regretting it in the end, she would survive that too. As she always had.
Starting to pull away, if for no other reason than arms that ached from a multitude of cuts and scrapes that had not had time to fully heal, her lips turned up at the corners.
”I know.”
Reaching up to touch a finger to the red tracks under his eyes, the tip of her index finger brushed his skin lightly as she followed the path it made.
With her teasing tone, and the rather confident acknowledgement of his admission that should - or should not have - slipped out, Connor felt a fool. An open book she was already teasing.
A warm flush ran up his tunic and coated his neck, and he tried to force a laugh; embarrassed and awkward.
"Wow. Forgive me." He wiped the drying streak from his face, around her finger. "It's been...a long few days. Very long."
Rubbing his hand over his face, he stepped back and even then didn't know what to do. Try to joke and get back to their banter status? Touch her hand and try to build a bridge? Try and be honest and open - and pave the way for more mockery? He wasn't sure.
"Listen...." the headache began inside, "...just, for once...." he couldn't finish the sentence.
Connor turned away, fists clenched and walked over to the window to try and feel like he wasn't trapped in an ever decreasing room with someone who could laugh and tease everything away. He pushed his fist to his temple, closed his eyes and focused as best he could through the pain, trying to stop the trembling and the spike in his aura.
