Private Something So Gleaming

[Ishida Ashina]

I want you to, too.

The talk of wanting, and not receiving or not accomplishing, made her insides tighten. He seemed so earnest in his efforts, and those few seconds she’d felt him unadulterated by parameters had been so golden. The slope of her brows angled upward, and she tucked her lips together in silent consideration at his reflection. This was more than he’d ever shared, and she dared not interrupt.

"it's as though the Force was given back to me for the sole purpose of making me renounce it again."

Instantly, his self-blame for the lives he’d been unable to save without The Force came to the fore of her mind. She didn’t mean to, but she winced from the struggling, webbed memories trying to insert themselves into their present, and she had to exert more focus than she was willing to admit to remain in the apartment on Denon and not intermingle Yavin’s ghosts with the now. The problems now were different than then. They’d both grown so much stronger, but so too had their problems.

He moved, and her eyes moved with him. There was no peaceful solitude, no privacy in this reunion. A whole year, maybe longer, had been out of sight. Now together, there was nowhere else to look. So she shifted her weight and adjusted so she couldn’t miss any of his precious movement and dropped her hands to her lap.

With every syllable, he invited her more into his difficult world. He’d tried to resolve it, seeking information from secondary sources and having to withdraw every time. It sounded exhausting. And if it got worse each time, did that mean what she’d just witnessed was the worst of it? It had been so sudden…

When she’d lost the Force, it had been methodical and solved by science. All she’d had to do was rest to get back up to par. For him, however, the journey to reinstitution had not only been long, but it had also been frustrating and almost fruitless.

And there was nothing she could think of to say to make it better.

"I wanted to find a solution to it, some way to feel the Force like I used to, before our reunion, so it wouldn't be a barrier between us like this, but, well . . ."

Her heart ruptured at his inconclusiveness, and she felt helplessness whoosh through her.

“Oh Bernard.” She whispered in a rush. It wasn’t pity that prompted her to speak. It was so much more. The fact he’d even considered their reunion as something tangible enough through all this time apart that he could use it as a motivator was almost overwhelming in and of itself and that wonder moved her. They'd both had to spend time separately trying to solve problems. Had it been the right choice? Or had isolation made things worse?

For a few seconds, she studied him looking dejected, frustrated, and done. Then she moved. She wanted to help take him out of himself, look at the problem in a different light. Her bare feet crossed the same pathway he chose to the kitchen and once there she slipped her arms around him, locked her wrists at his stomach and pressed her cheek against his back.

“It is not a barrier.” She promised his shoulderblade. So much of her swelled indignantly at the idea he’d hurt her if he tried again. It took a great amount of self-control not to offer herself up as that thing that he could hold onto to help him find balance.

Self-control she didn’t have. Not when it came to him.

“Unless we make it one. I don’t want you to feel like you're losing control, or putting me at risk. I could try and be an orientation point or —— or at least something to help you find balance. Somehow.

You're so right. I want to help if you let me.”

She insisted and stopped embracing his back and stepped to the side. “Or maybe you’re not meant to feel the Force as you did before. Maybe it’s an evolution of some sort you have yet to adjust to.

What have you found in your studies so far? Have you asked the Masters for help?”

 

[Bernard]

He stiffened for a split second when Ishida's arms wrapped around him. It had felt harsh and unfamiliar for that moment until he gave himself over to it. He'd been unprepared, but her embrace soothed the tension he felt. His shoulders eased, and his grip on the counter loosened.

She was right. It didn't have to be a barrier, but it felt so much like one. He'd regained the Force, become more like a full version of himself through it, but now it had become a liability. Turned him into a liability to those around him. He'd killed one Jedi before, driven by emotions that felt so much like what he experienced whenever he listened to the Force. There was no telling what might happen if he didn't find a way to get rid of whatever was causing him to feel them again.

In that respect, his time spent disconnected from the Force had been more peaceful, manageable. There was no gravity that seemed to pull him down into that frightening place. No risk of losing control and endangering others again.

"I spoke with a few of the Masters. They had some ideas, but with the war, every Jedi is needed; they couldn't devote any additional time."

"My research hasn't revealed much either. I've read of Jedi philosophers categorizing the Force, sought out viewpoints of the greatest Jedi healers, turned dusty tomes filled with deconstructions of meditations, force techniques, the Order's beliefs themselves. In all of it, there was little that led me closer to figuring out just what's going on. It could be some evolution, but—" he shifted, picked up a spoon, and added a heap of blue powder to the caf. "it's too intentional a change. There's more to it, I feel it."

"I know you're strong, and that you could help me, but I would be putting you at risk. I don't know whether I'm right or wrong about this caution, I really can't say," he traced the rim of the cup for a moment before he shifted, turning so he could search her eyes.

"I'm—" A tightness ran the length of his chest. He curled up his fingers, and his hands tightened into fists, then released again.

"I'm just afraid," he whispered, a small tremble in his voice.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Her smile was small when he admitted he’d spoken to masters, inadvertently confirming he’d sought help and wasn’t struggling through his plight entirely alone. But then that small curve flattened when she heard The Order’s priorities had to shift. All the Jedi were needed, and their conditions could wait. He had ideas offered, precedents through texts that didn’t quite overlap with his needs, and overall the same inconclusive outcomes. Her face pinched into something thoughtful.

And then it fell.

"I'm just afraid,"

Admitting he was afraid of himself felt so intimate, so proprietary that she almost stumbled, It was shocking how soft, quiet words could hit her with such brute strength. As if the admission’s volume had been traded instead for sheer force that crashed into her and spread its empathetic ache.

If only she were larger, wider, she might be able to wrap Bernard up entirely and eclipse that fear be that provider of sanctuary and protection. That insecurity wouldn’t be allowed to penetrate.

But she wasn’t. She was just her inadequate size that was only the hearer of fear. Her mouth opened a little, but she hesitated.

Fear is the path to the darkside.​

She banished the thought before the rest of the Sith’s doctrines bloomed in her memory. Those words dared not be applicable here. That was the trouble with words. In the direst of moments, with the most complex situations, they were lacking the power of actions. And nothing in Bernard’s conduct supported that sentence that had slipped in and out of her mind.

He was just a man in a kitchen, adding powdered blue milk to his coffee, who had no words adequate enough to articulate the depth of his feelings.

Before his hand could curl into another fist, she slipped hers into the empty space. Insufficient vowels and consonants rattled around in her mind. Trying, and failing, to form strings she could express to provide comfort. Broken and fragmented — you don’t have to be afraid. Don’t be. You shouldn’t be. It will be okay — dissuasions bounced behind her eyes. But how could she promise that? Tell him not to feel the way he did when she didn't understand his trouble?

It was sweet and serious that he worried about putting her in harm’s way, uncertain how risky it would be to work with her — but it was misplaced. The worst harm he could do to her was not through The Force. And that fear, that distrust, she’d already handed to him several times over. And she did again with her insistence to make up for lost time, to keep evolving and making her love for him earn itself as a verb.

But was that what he was afraid of? Or was it himself, and the nebulous unknown that pulled at the edges of his immersion? He’d said he was afraid of putting her in harm's way, but he was also afraid of losing control.

“What is it about losing control that scares you?”

 

[Bernard]

"I've seen the consequences of it play out before. Several times," he squeezed her hands, holding on to them more firmly.

The weight of those memories brought a heavy burden on his mind and heart. They came like avalanches, small prompts that evoked great cascades of past experience to play out, haunting him worst when his mind idled with nothing to hold on to.

It threatened to overwhelm him now. In search of an answer, he tripped baneful memories, recalled terrible events, and summoned sharp emotions. His breaths became shallower as he felt his chest tighten further and constrict his lungs.

Once the avalanche would have consumed him, but he'd hadn't been idle in their year apart. He shifted on his feet, turning his head away as he closed his eyes, breathed in a deep breath, then expelled it, slowly. He repeated the breath once or twice more. Tension diffused before it even arrived. He said a silent thank you to Hortula, opened looked back to Ishida.

"It would mean losing everything I stand for. Jedi who are driven by their emotions, who lose control, become hollow shells. Driven by whatever emotion drives them, they start to pursue only their own gain, descending further and further into a dark place that leads them to absolute ruin. They lose everything. I would lose everything.

"I'd lose this," he caressed the backs of her hands with his thumbs and held her eyes. "Us."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Bernard went somewhere again. Somewhere deep in his own mind that she only felt phantom effects of from his grip, or watching him keep in control of his breath. In previous circumstances, she’d been content to merely observe. But when it looked as though he was going to a more painful place, she was loathed to spectate.

When he came back to the kitchen, his answer was complicated. A mixed bag of personal experience with loss, and third-party observation. She frowned, scrutinizing through the words.

A year apart had set them on different courses to rectify themselves. Separate focuses that were so apart that Ishida was only beginning to see how far behind in his life she was. How much she had to learn. What were some of the theories he’d resonated with? How had he felt after the masters refocused their energies elsewhere? When she’d heard his voice on Jedha, his unfinished plea, had he been limiting his connection with The Force? Did his self handicap make him feel the same way he had admitted to on Yavin? Or had he grown past that?

“You won’t.” She defied this time, rejecting the hypothetical before it could plant roots. There was no fertile soil for that garden of thought — losing control, losing his self-worth, losing her. They’d already lost each other, in a minor capacity, once before. The idea of it happening again, under more sinister, irrecoverable circumstances, was brutal.

“You’re not the Jedi you’ve seen. You have your own experiences, your own strength to rely on.” Her gaze hardened, and she drew their hands closer to her chest and stepped back in to reaffirm how impossible she was to lose. “You just told me courage could be worn in lieu of fear. It’s just a matter of growing into it.

Losing control, becoming that which you’ve witnessed the consequences of can serve as a reminder, not a barrier.”

Her teeth clicked together, and she took a second to assess his expression before she spoke again, relenting some of her intensity in favour of sympathy.

“We’ll figure it out.” Her hands were gentle, but her voice was solid enough to sound like a promise.

 

[Bernard]

He smiled. It looked tired, worn out over the years.

"We'll figure it out is usually something couples say when they've run out of ideas," he half-suppressed a tired chuckle, as his smile widened a little.

"Before you ask, old tomes and ancient texts weren't the only thing I absorbed. There were some holodramas in there, intermittently. Maybe a bit more often than intermittent, admittedly."

His smile lingered for a few moments, then it faded and faint lines of worry returned. Her presence felt more comforting than her words. There was a confidence to them that he couldn't match. He felt heavier, exhausted from hours of study earlier that day, and from the effort to stave off a wave of emotion that had battered down his resolve for years.

"It is a reminder. They are reminders, to me. But it's not as simple as deciding not to lose control, not to lose balance. It's a constant battle. Feeling that pull day after day, every time I come across some reminder of what I've lived through, what might happen again to me, or to others. Knowing that when I wield a sabre I might fall prey to that pull.

"I don't know how long I can keep fighting it when it's so gruelling, day after day, and it scares me," he took in another deep breath and gently sighed it out. "I'm just a mortal."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"Run out?" She scrunched up her face in protest. "We're just getting started."

"I don't know how long I can keep fighting it when it's so gruelling, day after day, and it scares me, I'm just a mortal."

“That’s what I’m saying.” Ishida emphasized. “Fighting it sounds like a handicap. Knowing it's there, every day, is a hindrance. And one way or another, eventually, you will have to come to terms with that coldness that’s pulling at you.”

"With either understanding or confrontation." The brightness that had seeped into his expression moments ago, when he’d been relaxed, had abated. Replaced by sombre tiredness that dulled the natural warm colour of his skin. “You can't lose something you don't fully have. The way you're phrasing your experience doesn't sound like you have control, and what you have is tenuously held."

She let that statement live for a beat, trying not to look as harsh as that observation felt. Her information was broken, only able to surmise from the fractions he delivered.

"But you don’t have to do it alone. And you don’t have to do it right now either.” One of her hands moved to cup his cheek, drawing her thumb along the unscarred section. “When you're ready, I'm here.”

 

[Bernard]

If he didn't have control over his emotions if what he had was only a tenuous grasp on balance, then how could he call himself a Jedi Knight?

A Jedi had to live in balance. Discipline, restraint, self-control, were all essential to what differentiated them from Dark Jedi, Sith, or even just warriors who use the Force. Without them, he was no better than a Padawan, or worse an outsider to the Order.

And she was right. He didn't have that control. He'd been blinded by emotion when he'd fought Lanik, hunted an exemplar of the Order. Then again, on Krayiss, he let anger guide his actions, unbalanced by the play of his past experiences the spirits put on. On Yavin, he'd been so gripped by the fear of what would happen if he gave in to emotion that he'd let those emotions play into their decision to part ways. And ever since then, fear, doubt, anger, grief had all been companions of his more often than he'd wanted to admit, obfuscated by a constant immersion into old tomes or the absolute focus of the battlefield.

He wasn't a Jedi Knight, he was just running from ghosts that haunted him. His training had stopped when he'd left the temple on Arkania, and he'd been acting the part of a Jedi without being one since.

The weight on his heart grew heavier. His throat felt sore, taut as he swallowed. The ache went further, to his chest, which constricted around his lungs again, and he felt a cold numbness settle into his limbs. Ishida's hand on his cheek, the warmth her touch conveyed, became a small refuge. The ache he felt in his heart, his chest, became more bearable for it.

He brought his hand up and placed it against hers, leaning into the touch, and closed his eyes. His expression became a mix of calm and tension, trapped somewhere in between. Eyebrows and the skin around his eyes tensed and untensed as the ache slowly faded. He leaned into her hand more, turned to place a kiss in her palm, and opened his eyes to meet hers again.

"Thank you," he managed through the soreness in his throat.

At least he wouldn't have to face it all alone. He could grow into being a Jedi, into courage, as she'd said, alongside her.

He let go of her hand and stepped in to hug her close, finding comfort from being there in the moment with her.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Something she said must have been noteworthy enough for Bernard to retreat back into his mindscape. She wouldn’t have known her words had any effect on him whatsoever if it weren’t for the subtle inflections of his portrait she watched carefully for.

Maybe one day she’d ask to join him. Seek out where he went, adventure through the coils and networks of those thoughts together. But in the meantime, he distracted her with his acceptance and action and Ishida was content to follow his lead.

The hardness she’d built up in preparation to defend her will and obstinate need to help became slippery and softer with his breath against her skin. The gesture was intimate, unthinkingly pressing his lips against the hands that were more familiar with delivering death strokes than affection.

Silent after his gratitude, Ishida leaned into the moment. She closed her eyes and lent herself only to feeling his embrace. His strong arms around her so tightly she felt as though she might disappear. Her arms slipped around his waist and she climbed her hands up his back to press herself deeper into him.

When she breathed, she was vaguely aware of the lines between them. Where she could curve in no further. Where bodies created boundaries and identities separate from one another. In less than an hour, after a year of separation, they’d managed to task themselves with incredible burdens for their future selves while their present selves fumbled with the reality of reunion and everything that went on between them. They’d done a poor job at simply realizing one another in the moment, and her heart skipped a beat against his in a moment of striking fear that she was taking this for granted.

“I love you.” Ishida said for the first time since she’d appeared back in his life. It was the only response she could think of after his heartfelt thank you. As if it were an explanation or an alternative to you’re welcome.

At first, she remained pressed against him so he could feel the movement of her cheek on his chest with each syllable. But she wanted to see him, and she pulled back enough to see his face. Her eyes were sharp, gleaming with intensity.

“I loved you the entire time we were apart.” Her hands wound tighter around him, kneading pale muscle as if he might disappear if she was too loose with her touch.

It was a rush to hear herself speaking this way after so long. When they’d parted, the words had still been nascent and fresh. Full of meaning and undiscovered potential. But as unused as the words were, they felt natural. Easy. “And I will do everything in my power to promise that we will never have to go through that loneliness again.”

On the counter, the milky caf had cooled to a sip-friendly temperature and the ronto wraps she’d set down earlier were several degrees below lukewarm.

“Mostly because seeing you again after such a long time without you is too overwhelming,” Ishida murmured, her voice low and amused.

“And you're so terrible at taking breaks that you clearly need a present teacher.” Her shoulders scrunched forward to meet the pressure of her wrists against his back, squeezing him tighter to her.

 

[Bernard]

Bernard's chuckle was chocked off half-way from the intensity with which Ishida squeezed. It seemed impossible not to feel exuberant, even after a crushing realization as that, when they were together like this. The ache in his chest became a leaping heart and a desire to to explore every facet of joy they'd missed in their time apart, not only to make up for lost time but to make the first day of their life together memorable for the happiness they gave each other.

He was close to losing himself in her eyes again, but instead his gaze fell to her lips. Echoes of those words, I love you played in his mind and the memory of the sweet taste of her kiss compelled him in place of the peril of losing himself in the storms of her eyes. He'd leaned a little closer when he caught himself again, directing his thoughts away as though he had fallen under a spell. Though the moment was where he wanted to be, there was one last matter belonging to the future left.

He leaned away again, uncurling his arms from the embrace, and reached up behind himself to untie the necklace he wore. Once he managed to get the knot undone, he unwound it from his neck and held it up by its ends. It was made of a black cord that was looped through a ring made of silver metal. An engraving, filled in with a blue crystal, depicted a simplistic dragon.

"My parents gave this to me. The dragon was supposed to guide me home across Arkania's snow dunes, if I ever lost the path back home. But, during the last year it helped me keep faith that we'd meet again, despite everything. It's turned into something of a guiding star, something I could return to whenever I felt lost."

He lowered it and brought the ends behind Ishida's neck, tying them together.

"I want that to be you instead."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

Broad and rosy, the light from outside washed through the room in the sweet side of red, glimmering against the cool tones of the metal circle. It was beautiful, delicate. An intentionally engraved heirloom from the care of his parents to give him a point of safety in a world of uncertainty.

Ishida let go of a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding once she understood his intention.

"I want that to be you instead."

Her first reaction was to reject it, to deny the responsibility — what if she was an inconcrete beacon? It was one thing for her to make a promise, but for him to commit his trust to her? —but that reaction was short-lived. A thought manifested only as temporary stillness through her muscles. It made her arms hang limply around his waist while he reached his hands behind her.

Intense sensibleness and that reflection of his gratitude dashed her fleeting feeling of rejection. She did deserve this, and she’d spent a whole year working on herself to be a worthy counterpart. It was out of her jurisdiction to deem her worthiness. Their loyalty existed on either side, in equally true measures, and the promise to trust it to continue was the natural next step in their relationship.

This is what their world looked like without the boundaries of an X-Wing on course for Coruscant.

To assist, she reached up and twisted her hair away from where he meant to knot the necklace at the nape of her neck. She watched the token the entire time it travelled between them until it settled.

The silver ring tugged up and down against the navy blue fabric that covered the centre of her clavicle. She’d stopped wearing more plunging necklines after being scarred so gruesomely on Jedha, opting instead for the style she wore now — a traditional Atrisian, short unfolded stand-up style collar — that concealed her chest.

When it settled, his gift was stark in appearance against her top’s dark fabric, and she couldn’t look away from it. Enamoured by both the entrustment it represented and its foreign craftsmanship.

Languid and thoughtful, Ishida’s fingers floated to touch the ring, and instinctual desire pulled her gaze toward it. The design was so fascinating, the carving’s subject familiar as a dragon, but the depth and lines weren’t as crass as Atrisian art. And the gemstones ——

“Ah!” A freezing sting she hadn’t anticipated pricked her fingers.

Startled, her eyes widened and flashed back to Bernard. The initial shock abated almost as fast as it had appeared and was replaced by a sudden smile that started out small and broadened to a knowing curl.

Her nerves felt electric as she watched his eyes, the set of his mouth. His eyes, his lips, his spirit all at once smiled at her. And while his smile grew, the enormity of her emotion built and built, taking over everything so completely that she had no room left for anything else. Wonder, accountability, desire, awe, love.

Telling him again how loved he was felt incomplete. A one-syllable word was too small for how intensely she felt. How could four letters in basic and one symbol in Atrisian amount to the universe of deep compassion that swelled within her? How could she rephrase her promise to have meaning again?

Frustrated with the inadequacy of language, she lunged at him and pulled herself up to kiss her communique between them instead. Every touch expanded their intimate language. Her hands spread over his shoulders and eventually the force of her forearm behind his neck, the tightness of her fingers in his hair, made apologies of I’m sorry you were alone. I’m sorry I left. I’m sorry you had to wonder. Each apology was countered by the press of her lips making promises of accountability, presence and raw devotion.

 

[Bernard]

An instant of guilty concern took over when she gasped in surprise, and he pulled closer around her. He crossed his arms more tightly around her back and leaned in a little more, until her smile signaled relief for the sudden tension. A little self-conscious that the added pressure might have done the opposite of help, he eased away again.

He caught her as she lunged, stumbling back small steps, and lifted her enough to support the kiss. He held her steady against himself, bending back to balance their combined weight.

Her kiss felt good, filled with more certainty and as much emotion than their first kiss on the X-Wing's hull, but much more intense and intimate than the cosy exchanges that later followed in its pilot seat. It followed the trend of release for a year's worth of feelings all bottled up. As her hands moved over his shoulders he made a small noise of appreciation, pulling his arms around her more firmly. Her hands soon moved up into his hair and caused a pleasant shiver to run over his shoulders.

They had to break their kiss eventually when the demand for oxygen became critical. He breathed heavy breaths between them. His heart beat loud, fast. He closed his hands around her hips more firmly, stabilizing them again, and, impatiently, he closed the distance between their lips into another, shorter kiss. A breathless counterpart to hers.

"We both promised to be together," he started, still catching his breath. "We're both in love with each other. There's no X-Wing or Coruscant three days ahead of now to split us up for a full year. I believe that means we're officially dating?"

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

With eyes half-closed, still in a daze, Ishida’s recovery was slow when his mouth pulled her back into the fine haze of desire, like a drug they had created themselves. Surviving off the memories of his lips against hers, the warmth that had cascaded through her when he kissed her, compared little to the ability to action once again.

It was brief though, and her recovery process started all over again. Her mind was foggy, her hands loosened to rest on his shoulders after being reset.

His words floated through her mental mist, pleasant ones that elicited a tight-lipped smile of agreement. They had promised, each in their own way, to be together. And anytime she heard him say the word love, weakness threatened her knees.

believe that means we're officially dating?"

Her smile never wavered, but she felt stupified.

Officially dating.

On Atrisia, dating or boyfriends weren’t a part of her lexicon—heirs skipped that step and went straight to arranged betrothals. Such was the Ashina way. But that future had been so far from her mind that she’d almost entirely forgotten about it until Bernard articulated the opposite. And it was even more irreconcilable a path if she either succeeded or failed with her father’s path to redemption.

No matter what, that once-upon-a-time-expectation would have no way to intrude on this life she was creating for herself, with him. That concept of choice, and him choosing her back, brightened her stupid grin. Dating and its many intricacies was a concept to be nurtured to further development.

“Yes.” She agreed in a single breath.

“Let the record state you are officially my boyfriend.” Her nose pressed to his and she dropped her hands to clasp his wrists on her hips. The word itself somehow encapsulated both excitement and comfort in just two syllables. In his arms, she swayed.

“I didn’t realize how important it would feel to say that out loud between us.” Ishida admitted, relaxing her hands at the end of a thrilled tremble while she reflected. Her brows knit temporarily, searching through how she’d considered him in the past year. She’d never considered sharing her devotion beyond him, but the articulation had always been nebulously ‘It’s complicated’.

A short exhale puffed through her nose.

In an exercise of transparency, she admitted as much with a roguish smirk and shrug: “Much better than complicated.”

Her smile softened, gaze dropped to watch the aimless roam of her fingers up his forearms, “That's one of my favourite things to hear you say.” over the inside of his elbow’s bend and to his biceps.

When her eyes lifted to meet his, she was vaguely aware that the room's pink glow from outside was deepening, growing redder, and it did a so-so job at hiding the flush in her cheeks. “When you say you love me.”

 

[Bernard]

He exhaled a tense breath of joy and relief when she answered. Through the year, expectations had changed, warped, and evolved until, eventually, he'd managed to let go of most of them, but when he'd asked it, still dazed from the kiss, he'd felt a small surge of apprehension move up his spine. There'd been a lot of uncertainties about them since Yavin that he hadn't known quite what to expect from her answer, so that a direct yes came as an exciting relief. And though it collapsed the complexity of their togetherness, it still created that complex emotion that, quickly, concluded in a steady joy and agreement with the importance of those words.

Thoughts, consequences, and implications quickly swelled to imbalance that new status quo, but he brushed them aside. He didn't furrow his brows in thought but instead chose to remain with the brush of Ishida's fingers, felt them move up his arms with quieting gentleness.

"That's one of my favourite things to hear you say," he met her eyes. "When you say you love me."

"I know," he moved his arms to wrap around her again, letting his hands rest on her back where his fingers curled her hair. It seemed almost pink in the drowsy light of Denon's prime star.

"You tend to go a bit quiet," he pulled her closer, "make a big smile, get lost in your own thoughts as though it's, well, overwhelming."

"And I could swear you sway a little, like just now," he considered for a moment, then moved a hand down her side, drawing a small circle against her thigh, and glanced down. "Something about your legs. It's less overt when you're more guarded," his eyes returned to hers. "I never get a good glimpse.

"Because you get this look, between startled and entranced."

Her eyes lit up in the waning light, mesmerizing, as they always were, and consuming. They'd captured rose fire in grey storms. It seemed somehow profane to look anywhere else. He leaned closer, letting the distance between them succumb to a kind of magnetism until her breath brushed his skin.

"And I can't tear myself away when you do," his voice dropped to a whisper in deference to a deep reverence for the transient.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

"I know,"

He took her words and suspended them in a world made of his observations that made her tighten, blush deepen, and her mouth twist into an indignant knot. A little noise of protest puffed out – hmph – her final vestiges of the coveted Ashina-mystique and indifference — gone.

It was startling, verge indecent, to hear she'd stated something so obvious. All that she thought were secrets was readily known through tell-tale observations he'd collected through their handful of romantic exchanges.

Her body didn't match the signals of her brain and heart, and it still tried to establish protection from vulnerability. Armour plated itself through her posture, poising herself to challenge his so-called knowledge.

But the tension wound through her melted away when he harmlessly wrapped her up, closed his arms around her and twirled the loose ends of her hair. Rigidity elapsed, replaced instead with relaxing tingles coursed up and down her spine. She felt herself lean into his embrace with each twist of her tresses. Her ears eager for what else had been so telling.

With each second that passed, Bernard delved deeper into the subtle intimacies she'd unconsciously exhibited.

It was overwhelming to hear him say he loved her. And her brows pulsed to emphasize the truth to his attention. The smile was equally involuntary and happening now— Bit by bit, the knots of attitude that twisted through her lips unwound and loosened into a tiny v-shaped simper. Amusement glimmered at the corners of her mouth and eyes.

He traced over the delicate fabric of her clothes, skin to silk, and her heart's acceleration betrayed her just as those other details he'd described.

"And I can't tear myself away when you do,"

Between the curve of his eyes and the lines of his lips, Ishida couldn't choose her focus. She bounced betwixt both, pulled into that same magnetism that left him lingering. Finally, she watched his eyes — pulled into the endlessness of the pearl horizons.

The last of her breath spread through her chest, like wings, fluttering avidly. It was a feeling so immense it spread and spread, beating and flapping into a beautiful ache.

Surely he could feel her heart thumping when he was pressed this close.

Stinging with nerves, her mouth half-parted to an incomplete and soundless buzz. His eyes said the words that made her come undone and his arms tightened and warmed her with the language they'd translated for themselves back when she was too broken in Yavin's dawn to say the three words that meant so much now. She's was more whole in this timeline, feeling more complete than ever in the embrace they shared. Bolder.

Greed encouraged her goading: "Then say it again."

 

[Bernard]

He lingered on a precipice. Cold iron curled around his throat, chest, and arms. He'd feared this. Feared what guilt and memory of red-stained hands might do. All this time apart, spent anticipating this moment of reunion, he'd felt guilt only for the fear he had of taking this leap of telling her, when their eyes met and they fell so deeply into one another, that he loved her.

It had come easily back then, but with their separation had come time for the enormity of it to settle. The things he'd experienced, the history that weighed him down, it had broken him down countless times. It still echoed, in memory, in his thoughts, his feelings, and in his very being. Cracks and shards that made his heart a jagged thing.

The words would ring hollow if he said them now, wouldn't they? Red-stained hands were capable of only one thing.

His hands bunched the fabric of her shirt in the firm clasp of his fingers. His expression softened, glance falling from her eyes to her lips, where it lingered a moment before returning. The echo of electricity running through his nerves when he saw her lips and the rose-gray radiance in her eyes, they made his heart beat more intensely and his breaths deepen.

She looked beautiful. He'd thought the same after they'd escaped the temple, and her hair had been a tangled mess of red and white, her eyes had been heavy with grief, and her skin covered with dust and sweat. He'd loved her then as much as he did now.

So he leapt, "I love you."

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

She felt him tighten, like a flinch, and the fluttering in her chest sharpened. Captivated in intimacy, her eyes followed his, and she felt herself smile when she realized he mirrored her conundrum for focus. He too seemed caught between two points and took precious half-seconds to respond to her ear’s avarice. Her greed quickly shifted from flirtatious boldness to something more wanting — but never insatiable.

"I love you."

There it was. Pure, raw, and unadulterated by distraction. His three words that unlocked her safeguards floated between them; their sound curved over her nose and soaked into her cheeks, deepening their rosiness.

Ishida’s happiness bled into the bend of her lips. Emotion stung at the angle of her eyes, and she moved deeper against him to lose herself to it.

It was more than the syllables that moved his chin; His eyes said I love you with such sincerity that he could have spoken nothing at all and she would have known. His look alone would have been saying it again.

But hearing, seeing, and feeling it all at once was a specialness that consumed her. A loosening sensation rolled through her body and undermined her steadiness in the sweet circle of his arms. Its roaming tingle reached even her fingertips, plaguing her with a transient numbness.

Readier than before, she met him with another reassurance of her commitment — “I love you too.” The words were delicate, low, so softly brushed between their lips until Ishida crushed them and prevented their spoken entirety. The completion was truncated by her mouth pressing to his; Forever trapping the sentiment’s unity within their kiss.

In the minutes passed since her arrival on his doorstep, she’d revealed some of her most intimate complexities, and he’d invited her to his own. Closer, closer her being whispered— after a year apart, every second they spent together like this, sharing secrets, potential, devotion, she needed him so much closer. Wrapped up like this, it was as though she could feel him pulsing in her veins. Addictive and intense.

When the need came for pause, she stayed close and closed her eyes. A smile rewound its way across her face, settling like a toothsome hammock between her cheeks. Between breaths, she curled her fingers against his torso and popped a knee forward to draw attention back down to her legs to emphasize her question: “Did you manage a glimpse that time?”

 

[Bernard]

The last word of her sentence fell to the silence that settled with their kiss. Any words beyond the ones he knew in her language became unnecessary. The most direct language available to them required only those three. There was a note of gratitude at the back of his mind, for having stumbled upon this idiosyncrasy of hers during his gamble on Yavin, but the note faded as he lost himself to sensation.

Intense relief overcame him. The words still echoed in his mind, even as his nerves seemed to light up under the heat of her body pressed so close against his, and the tender exchange of their kiss contended for every fragment of his awareness. Still, her words, more importantly, what they represented, were all he could fixate on. He felt then, suddenly, as though all the heaviness that had settled through the year burned away with every second they stayed together like this, captured by and capturing the essence of those words.

It seemed over too soon, but he came out of their kiss feeling lighter, and perhaps still a little entranced. He smiled the same as she did, simply embracing the last ebbs of emotion.

It lasted a few, blissful moments until something hit him just below the knee. He opened his eyes, finding Ishida grinning at him, ready with a question, and knew then she'd just knee'd him.

"Did you manage a glimpse that time?"

Surely she knew there couldn't have been any physical possibility to see her legs during their kiss.

His brows furrowed in response, attempting some show of disapproval, though he couldn't quite lose his smile. Not when he could see her eyes, bright with joy, this close.

"Are you about to mock me?"

He could almost feel the impending groan already building at the base of his throat in anticipation of her follow-up line.

Ishida Ashina

 

[Ishida Ashina]

“About to mock you?” The corners of her smile deepened, eyes aglow with the chuckle that vibrated up her throat.

Despite the transgressions that followed behind them and kept their shadows dark, there was light in his eyes, his words, his touch. Like a moth, she fluttered helplessly toward it, drawn in by nothing else. All that was daunting in the past and future felt smaller, reduced to almost nothing, in the scope of the present — simply by contrast to the largeness his presence compelled.

“Not more than that for now.” Her tongue clicked against the roof of her mouth as if locking away that speech bubble that waited to slip forth. The humour of her grin sharpened, turning devilish. The edges of her mouth were almost as pointed as her eyeliner now.

“Coerce you though? To validate your so-called observations just so I can keep hearing you tell me how you feel?” She trailed her hands over his wrists, to his hands, and leaned herself back in his arms enough so the embrace might break and she could step back, holding on to one hand as if they were dancing. It was enough for them to remain linked, but — should she be so fortunate enough for Bernard to take the bait — far enough for him to see if her knees truly went weak or if it were just a thing he said for the sake of it.

“That, I might do.”

After she'd created that distance, the warmth they'd created melted away, and she almost felt regret.

But how could she feel regret with her hand still in his, when after a year she'd been without?

 

[Bernard]

"Coercion?" He asked, and his expression shifted, caught between an embarrassed smile and thoughtful focus, until it finally settled on the latter.

He stepped closer, slipping his hand out from under her grasp and to her wrist. He continued to step closer and trailed her arm with his hand, guiding it to rest on his shoulder. When her elbow met his shoulder, he reached back to hook her arm around his neck. Another step later, they were back to where they'd started.

"You should realize that..." He said, looping an arm around her.

He took her free hand into his and stepped even closer, placing his foot on the floor behind her. He made sure his hold around her waist was secure, winked, then leaned in, gently pushing against her to indicate he meant to transition this dance someplace new. Someplace that needed a large measure of trust.

Gradually, she'd move backwards, carefully 'falling' in his arms. He kept his eyes on hers, focusing intently on the execution of their pose and, more importantly, on making sure she didn't actually fall as they moved lower together. When her back faced the floor, he stopped and held her steady.

He held still until she adjusted to her new perspective. The way he held her now, almost resembled a holodrama scene, and he played it with quite the same intensity.

He leaned closer but stopped before their lips met.

"Threats won't do you any favours."