Rain fell in sheets across the shattered ruins, plastering her robes to her skin and casting a silver gleam over the scorched stones. She stood alone, lightsaber unlit, heart pounding louder than the thunder that cracked above them.
He was waiting for her...cloaked in black, eyes glowing faintly beneath the stormlit sky. His saber hung loose in his grip, humming low and red like a warning not yet spoken. She should have been afraid. But all she felt… was drawn.
"You shouldn't be here," he growled, voice rough as gravel, like it hurt him to speak. "You're everything I swore to destroy."
She didn't answer. Instead, she stepped forward, the rain whispering over her skin, her hand reaching, just barely toward his chest. Her fingers hovered inches from the soaked fabric clinging to muscle and scar.
"Then why haven't you stopped me?"
His breath hitched. Lightning danced behind them. Her eyes searched his, daring, gentle, trembling. He raised a hand slowly...slowly enough to stop himself...until his knuckles brushed her cheek.
His gloved knuckles lingered against her skin, just for a moment too long. The tension between them stretched, breathless and electric, tighter than any drawn saber. Her heart thundered in her bosom.
"You always hesitate," she whispered, her voice barely audible beneath the pouring rain. "But not with me."
His hand dropped, balled into a fist at his side. His jaw clenched like he was fighting the urge to say something, to do something. Anything but walk away.
"You make me weak," he said, the words almost drowned by the wind. "And I hate that."
She didn't move, instead just watching him with those wide, steady eyes full of things he didn't know how to fight. Forgiveness, and hope. A kind of softness that had no place on a battlefield.
"Then stop coming back to me," she said gently.
