Private Stubborn as Stone

[Meri Vale]

The structure should not have been standing.

Meri noted that almost immediately, the conclusion arrived with the same quiet certainty as a solved equation. The building's bones were wrong, too compromised, too exhausted, and yet somehow still upright, as if held together by stubbornness rather than physics.

Several of the primary supports had failed long ago. She could see the sag in the load-bearing frame, the subtle bowing that spoke of years without reinforcement. The outer wall bore stress fractures that should have propagated further, thin white lines spiderwebbing across the surface like a map of old injuries. Water damage had weakened more than one internal beam; she could smell the rot beneath the dust. There were sections where the material composition alone should have caused a collapse, brittle composites layered over metals that had long since lost their integrity.

And yet, it remained.

She paused just inside what had once been a broad entryway, letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. Her satchel slipped from her shoulder with a soft thud as she knelt near a half-buried section of flooring. The air tasted of rust and old storms. From the bag, she drew a slim datapad and a stylus, its surface already crowded with layered sketches and notes, overlapping diagrams, half-finished calculations, small arrows pointing toward questions she had not yet answered.

Not for records.

For understanding.

She settled into a familiar crouch, the posture of someone who had spent a lifetime studying the world from ground level, and began to draw.

Lines first. Angles. Relative spacing. The way the ceiling sloped more sharply on one side than the other suggested uneven settling. The irregular spacing between pillars hinted at later modification or desperation. Her hand moved quickly, confidently, translating three-dimensional space into something she could rearrange and test in her mind. She mapped stress paths, imagined load distribution, and traced invisible forces through the ruin's skeleton.

Occasionally, she paused to glance up, compare, and adjust. A small tilt of her head. A narrowing of her eyes. A correction so slight it barely disturbed the dust around her.

No frustration. No rush.

Just quiet focus.

A few minutes later, she shifted closer to a fractured wall panel, brushing debris aside with the back of her hand. She studied the darkened scoring along its surface, the way the burn pattern feathered outward. She sketched that too, reducing the damage to simplified shapes and vectors, then added small notes in the margins, shorthand only she would understand.

Not explosive. Controlled overload. Directional.

Interesting.

She tilted her head slightly, considering, then added another set of lines that connected the damage to nearby structural changes. The pattern was incomplete, but it was forming, like a constellation emerging from scattered stars.

She did not notice the sound of footsteps at first.

Only when one of her pencil strokes hesitated, a tiny break in the smooth rhythm of her work, did she realize something had shifted in the background hum of the space.

Movement.

Meri lifted her gaze slowly, stylus still poised above the datapad.

"Ah," she said quietly, more surprised than alarmed. "Hello."

She straightened a little, tucking the datapad against her knee, pale eyes settling on the figure emerging from the shadows. Her posture remained open, unguarded, as if she were greeting a colleague rather than a stranger in a ruin that should have collapsed decades ago.

"I did not realize anyone else was here."

Her tone was simple. Honest. As if finding someone in the ruins was unexpected, but not unwelcome.

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Meri Vale
​

Elian froze the moment he recognized her. The datapad. The crouched posture. The way her attention was on the structure rather than the fact that it should have killed her by now. His relief hit first, sharp and immediate, followed almost instantly by disbelief.

"Meri?" he said, a little too loudly for a place that echoed as much as this one did.

He stepped fully into the light, boots crunching over debris as he closed the distance between them in long strides. His eyes flicked instinctively to the ceiling, to the fractured supports she had been sketching, to the walls that bowed like they were holding their breath. Every engineering instinct he had was screaming at him. He stopped a few paces away from her and planted his hands on his hips, staring.

"What are you doing out here by yourself?" he demanded, disbelief bleeding straight into concern. "Do you have any idea where you are right now?"

His gaze dropped to the datapad pressed against her knee, then back to her face, brows knitting together.

"Are you crazy?" he added, not unkindly, but absolutely unfiltered. He exhaled and scrubbed a hand through his hair, forcing himself to slow down before his voice climbed any higher. "This place should have collapsed years ago," Elian said, gesturing vaguely around them. "I could see that from the outside. One bad vibration and this whole thing comes down on your head."

He shook his head, then softened just a fraction, concern overtaking the edge in his tone. "I was scouting the perimeter and I almost did not come in," he admitted. "Then I saw movement and thought, no way someone is actually inside."

His eyes searched her face, checking for injuries he did not yet see.

"You cannot just wander into ruins like this alone," he said more quietly. "At least tell me you had a plan."

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri blinked once at the sudden volume of her name, the sound cutting sharply through the quiet she had been working in. She blinked again when she saw the way he crossed the space toward her, moving with a kind of urgent purpose, as though he feared she might disappear if he did not reach her quickly enough.

For a moment, she simply looked at him. Her pale eyes followed the lines of his movement, taking in the tension in his shoulders, the way his breath caught, the concern written more clearly in his posture than in anything he had said. It took her a heartbeat to understand that the intensity was directed at her.

Then, slowly, she let herself soften.

Her shoulders eased downward. The fingers wrapped around her stylus loosened, the pressure fading until the tool rested lightly against her palm. The tension she had not even realized she was carrying slipped away in small, almost imperceptible increments, like dust settling after a long disturbance.

"Elian," she said quietly, and there was a faint, unmistakable thread of relief woven through the sound of his name.

She glanced down at her datapad, then back up at him, as if confirming that he was truly standing there and not some imagined interruption conjured by her concentration. The layered sketches on the screen suddenly seemed fragile compared to the reality of him.

"I am drawing," she explained, her voice honest and unguarded. She lifted the datapad a little so he could see the overlapping lines and notes. "I am trying to understand why it is still standing. How it used to work. How it survived this long."

A small curve touched the corner of her mouth at his next comment, a quiet, almost shy amusement.

"Crazy is part of life," she said gently, as though offering reassurance rather than deflecting it. "I do not think I am there yet."

When he gestured toward the walls and ceiling, she followed the motion with her eyes. She studied the fractures again, the bowed supports, the places where the structure sagged under its own history. She did not dismiss his concern. She simply absorbed it, catalogued it, and added it to the mental map she had already been building.

"I know it is unstable," she said softly. "That is why I am being careful. I have not touched anything structural. I have been listening for shifts. And I stayed near the entrance."

Then she looked back at him, her brow drawing together in mild, genuine confusion.

"Why can I not wander into places like this alone?" she asked. There was no defensiveness in her tone, only curiosity. "I have done it for years. Since I was little. It is usually safer than it looks, if you pay attention."

She hesitated, her head tilting slightly to one side as she tried to parse his meaning.

"And…a plan for what?" Meri asked. "For collapsing? For getting lost? For running away?"

A small, uncertain laugh escaped her, light and unpolished.

"I was just going to finish this section and then leave," she admitted. "That was my plan, I think."

She studied him for a long moment, her gaze steady and searching, taking in the way his concern had not fully faded, the way it clung to him like a shadow he had not noticed.

Then, with a gentleness that matched the quiet of the ruin around them, she turned the question back toward him.

"What are you doing here?"

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Meri Vale
​

Elian opened his mouth to answer immediately, then stopped. He exhaled slowly and let his hands drop from his hips.

"I am here because this place showed up on three different old transit overlays where it absolutely should not exist," he said, tone easing but still threaded with concern. "And because every instinct I have told me it was either empty, dangerous, or hiding something."

His eyes flicked to the datapad again, then back to her. "Turns out it was hiding you," he added, a little quieter. At her questions, he shook his head and let out a short, incredulous huff of a laugh. Not mocking. Just overwhelmed.

"You ask that like it is obvious," Elian said. "Like everyone grows up wandering into half collapsed ruins alone with a stylus and a datapad."

He stepped closer, not crowding her, but close enough now that his voice no longer had to carry.

"You cannot wander into places like this alone because sometimes paying attention isn't enough," he continued. "Because structures fail in ways that do not warn you. Because you can do everything right and still be standing in the wrong place when something finally gives."

"I did not expect to find you in the middle of it," he admitted. "But now that I have…"

He straightened slightly, resolve settling in alongside the concern.

"You finish that section," he said. "I will watch the structure. We leave together."

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri listened to him without interrupting, her attention shifting gently between his face and the fractured stone above them. She took in the strain in his voice, the way his concern threaded through every word, and she absorbed it quietly, as though she were studying another part of the ruin itself. When he finished, she did not answer right away. Instead, she let a thoughtful silence settle between them, turning his worry over in her mind from several angles before deciding how to respond.

Then she released a small breath that might have been a laugh, soft and almost disbelieving.

"Do you know how many ruins I have found on Naboo alone that should not be there?" she asked, her tone light but sincere. "There are half-buried foundations in gardens, collapsed watch posts hidden in the hills, old tunnels that no one remembers anymore. Sometimes they only appear when the rain is heavy, or when the light hits the ground at just the right angle."

She glanced around the space again, her gaze lingering on the broken architecture with a deepening interest rather than any hint of caution.

"So if this is something like that," Meri continued, her voice thoughtful and almost reverent, "something that is not supposed to exist anymore but somehow still does… then I am even more interested."

When she looked back at him, her eyes widened just a fraction, genuine surprise flickering across her expression at something he had said earlier.

"Wait," she murmured, amusement slipping into her voice like a quiet ripple. "You mean people do not usually grow up wandering into half-collapsed ruins with a datapad and a stylus?"

The corner of her mouth lifted, shy but unmistakably real.

"I thought that was normal."

The humor softened, fading into something quieter and more vulnerable.

"I understand what you mean," she said gently. "About things failing without warning. About doing everything right and still ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Her gaze dropped to the floor for a moment, as though she were tracing the cracks beneath her boots, then she lifted her eyes back to him with a steadier breath.

"I suppose I just…" She paused, searching for the right shape of the thought. "I never really learned to think of it as dangerous in the same way. If something did collapse on me…"

She hesitated, the words catching for a heartbeat before she finished them in a quiet, matter-of-fact tone.

"There is not really anyone who would miss me enough for it to matter."

It was not said for sympathy. It was simply the truth as she understood it, offered without embellishment or self-pity.

After a moment, she shifted her weight and raised the datapad again, the stylus poised between her fingers with renewed purpose.

"But," Meri added, glancing up at him with a small, grateful smile that warmed the space between them, "I appreciate you staying. It is…nice. Not doing it alone this time."

She nodded once, a small gesture of resolve.

"I will be quick."

Elian Abrantes

 

[Elian Abrantes]

Meri Vale
​

Elian stared at her for a heartbeat longer than necessary, trying to understand what she had just said and failing entirely.

What was she talking about.

The idea that no one would miss her lodged in his chest like a misaligned gear, grinding every time he breathed. He straightened from his crouch, concern sharpening into something firmer, more resolved, as if a decision had quietly locked itself into place.

"You may have done this many times alone. I believe you." He gestured once around the ruin, toward the sagging supports and fractured stone, then back to her.

"But not anymore," Elian continued. There a slight tinge of anger, and perhaps even a break in his voice. "Not while I am standing here." He stepped closer and extended his hand toward her, palm open, steady, offering rather than demanding.

"Give me your hand," he said gently, but with an edge of finality that made it clear this was not a casual suggestion.

His jaw tightened just a fraction as he spoke again, eyes never leaving her face. "I have already lost enough friends," Elian said quietly. "I am not losing any more." His fingers curled slightly, patient, waiting. "I will not have your death on my conscience," he added, voice low but unwavering.

 

[Meri Vale]

Meri did not pull away when he stepped closer. If anything, she went very still, the kind of stillness that meant her attention had narrowed entirely onto him, the way it did when she was trying to understand a difficult passage in a text or trace the logic of an unfamiliar structural pattern. His tone, the edge beneath it, the slight tremor that wavered under his resolve, all of it reached her at once, settling into her awareness with surprising clarity.

"What do you mean…not anymore?" she asked quietly, her voice soft and steady.

There was nothing defensive in the question, nothing sharp or challenging. It was simply confusion, honest and unguarded, shaped by the fact that she truly did not understand what he meant or why he sounded as though the answer mattered so much.

She watched his hand as he held it out to her, open and steady, and then lifted her gaze back to his face. The tension there, the stubborn set of his jaw, the tightness around his eyes, the unmistakable concern that softened everything else, made her hesitate in a way she was not used to. It was not fear. It was something quieter, something that made her feel as though she needed to move carefully so she did not break whatever fragile thing he was offering.

"You…care?" Meri asked softly.

The word felt strange in her mouth, as though she were speaking a language she had only ever heard from a distance. There was disbelief in it, a quiet uncertainty, and beneath that something fragile she tried to hide but could not quite keep from slipping through.

For a moment longer, she stayed exactly where she was, the stylus resting loosely against her datapad, her posture caught between caution and curiosity. It looked as though she feared that moving too quickly might cause the moment to collapse, like a weakened beam giving way under sudden pressure.

Then, slowly, she reached up.

Her fingers were cool from the stone and the air, tentative as they slid into his open palm. When their hands met, she felt the warmth of his skin immediately, solid and real in a way that startled her. Her grip tightened just a little without her meaning to, as though her body had decided before her mind could catch up.

"I did not realize…" she murmured, the words trailing off as if she were still trying to understand the shape of the thought.

Her eyes dropped briefly to their joined hands, studying the contrast between them, then lifted again with a quiet steadiness.

"Thank you," Meri said, her voice soft but sincere. "For…not letting me do it alone."

A small, uncertain smile touched her lips, the kind that appeared only when she was feeling something she did not quite know how to name.

"I will try to remember that."

Elian Abrantes