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In A Single Moment
Alina sighed as she climbed down into the bowels of the ship, following her quarry into its depths.
Down here it was cool, peaceful, the only sound the hum of the engines and the reactor. A far cry from the chaos and slaughter of Khofar.
The durasteel of the ladder underneath her fingers and palms was like ice as Alina’s hands tightened on the rungs and she paused in her descent.
Khofar. What an unmitigated, bloody, mess.
In the century since she’d left Ravka, left her home planet and all the troubles it had heaped upon her, far behind, Alina had known relatively little to compare. She’d been involved in her fair share of skirmishes and battles as a Jedi, both as Padawan and Knight, but nothing to rival what she’d seen and heard down on that humid, musty excuse for a planet.
For a moment, Alina heard the song of a lightsaber blade as it swept through the air, guided by a strong arm and the Force, aimed at her neck, casting a bloody sheen over the twilit clearing. She closed her eyes, leaning her head on the ladder rungs for a moment, as she heard once more the agonised screams of her brother and sister Jedi as the unknown attacker cut them down, the crunch as Yord’s neck snapped, the gasps as Jecki had been pierced not once, not twice, but three times by the attacker’s blade.
She saw once more the light leave Jecki’s eyes, leave Yord’s eyes, as the life left with it, and all that they were became one with the Force. Her hands trembled around the ladder rungs, her breath hitched, and the light in her veins, her constant companion, rippled and shuddered in response to her emotions.
In the years since she’d left Ravka, that light had been her guiding star. Freed of the expectations and shackles of the Sun Summoner, of the court, of the Grisha, Alina had found a freedom and a strength she would have never guessed existed…before.
Before, when she suffered under the yoke of first one tyrant, then another. One who believed her light belonged to him, and with it her life and her soul.
Once she had left Ravka and all its ghosts behind, once the tether forcibly joining her soul to another’s had been cut and cauterised, there had been no reason to hide any longer. Among the Jedi, Alina had learned to let her power shine without fear.
Alina had learned to let go of fear. She let it go now, reaching out to the Force to let it wash her clean, inhaling all the strain and anguish of the past few hours since landing on Khofar, and exhaling it, letting it pass through her until it was wiped from her psyche.
Opening her eyes, she felt herself centred once more, even as she sensed the growing, turbulent feelings of another, so very near.
Sol.
Alina had sensed his anguish, his disquiet, all the way back to the ship. She knew leaving the bodies behind had pained him, but the Council needed to be informed of the battle, and the attacker. An attacker, trained and powerful in the Force, armed with a red lightsaber.
An attacker that felt…strangely familiar, though Alina did not know where she had encountered him before. She had not been part of Sol’s initial investigation into the killings perpetrated by Mae Aniseya, only being assigned when she arrived back on Coruscant by chance just before Sol was given clearance by Master Vernestra to go to Khofar.
She supposed, at the time, that she could have encountered the attacker, the Stranger as she dubbed him in her mind, anywhere, at any time. Just another face in the crowd.
Even though instinct whispered not. It would take time, and meditation, to discern why she felt as though she recognised the Stranger she had never met before.
Time she did not have at present. Dismissing her thoughts as distraction, Alina resumed her climb down to the medbay and control room where the transceiver for the comms array was. Sol had left the ship in her stewardship as the autopilot took them out of atmo and into communications range with Coruscant, but she had sensed his disquiet, her pain, as surely as she felt the air in her lungs as he had passed.
She’d barely waited until Sol was out of sight before she had passed the ship’s controls into Osha’s capable hands.
Osha. Osha Aniseya.
Something about the girl troubled her also, but as with the Stranger, Alina didn’t have the time to meditate on it. It could wait. Her priority was Sol.
Resuming her downwards climb, Alina felt the waves of Sol’s turmoil buffet her in the Force, like waves upon a rock. A storm brewing in a void.
Gone was the passionate but centred Jedi she had known, once upon a time. In his place…uncertainty…instability…anguish.
Guilt.
Alina vividly recalled their last meeting. It had been just before Sol had received the assignment to Brendok with Indara, her padawan, and Kelnacca. Painful, necessary, as their parting had been then, both had recognised the wisdom in it, the necessity.
A Jedi must not form attachments.
A possibly immortal one, even less so.
Alina had never fully told Sol the truth of what she was, who she was, the vitality and longevity she had discovered in the wake of fully unlocking her powers after leaving Ravka behind, but she had known only pain lay in their future if she did not break their bond.
Instead, she had learned to love and let go. She had let Sol go and discovered her love didn’t die, but as she had been taught, she did not seek to possess him either. Possession was a mark, a scar, from her past, an instinctual behaviour perhaps, for an orphan, but one she had trained out of herself. The greedy impulses that would’ve pushed her to violate her vows, her own choices, to the Order, to herself, had been ruthlessly quashed.
She had recognised the same propensity within herself as she had once seen in another, had once suffered at his hands for, and had knowingly turned away. She would not become…him.
She would not drag Sol down with her. And when the day came where she lost him to the Force, she would let him go with pain and acceptance, for the man she had known, for the man she had grown to love, once upon a time.
Love truly, deeply, selflessly. Without attachment or possession, without the instincts of an orphan or the greed of a tyrant.
That love had enabled her to meet him again for the first time in seventeen years with equanimity, with nothing more than a fond smile as she’d met his eyes, felt the old feelings rise, but not let them rule her as she had clasped his hand in greeting.
Even then, she had sensed his disquiet, felt that something was not quite right, but it had been subsumed beneath the urgency to reach Khofar, to save Master Kelnacca before the murderer reached him, and so Alina had focussed on the mission.
Perhaps to their detriment.
Because what she was sensing from Sol now was so much worse than before. Heightened perhaps by Khofar, but its foundations, the heart of the storm, had been laid long ago. It had to have been, to so deeply and insidiously bound to Sol’s self.
The Sol she had known had been passionate, sometimes impulsive and reckless, but more often than not, he had patient, calm, ready with a joke or smile.
The Sol she had met again for the first time in seventeen years still possessed that passion, but it was tempered by something, some wound.
A wound that stemmed from the young woman currently sat in the cockpit, guiding the ship to comms range. It incontrovertibly bound them, sunk like claws into Sol’s soul.
Just as Alina cleared the lower deck, she felt the storm swell as the sound of a fist being driven into a control panel reached her ears. She looked over her shoulder and saw Sol, stood at the transceiver control display, his back to her, bent over it, his gauntleted hands in fists. His breath shuddering from him.
He was in pain.
Alina sighed as she felt a pang of her own, deep in her gut. Pain for Sol’s pain, suffering for his suffering.
“Sol,” she breathed.
It was a mark of just how anguished he was that he hadn’t sensed her approach. They had once been so close, enmeshed in the Force in a way she had never known before, not with Mal, the boy she had once believed she loved, and not with…him, with their poisonous, twisted excuse for infatuation and obsession that had once existed between them.
Sol flinched at her gentle call of his name, as she felt his surprise and his shame at being caught so unmanned by his emotions, but she would not have it. Someone she loved was hurting and she would not let them suffer alone.
No matter how hard he tried to evade her eyes or ignore her entreaties.
“You should be in the cockpit,” he ground out, his voice a harsh, hoarse shadow of its usual tone. Alina had always loved Sol’s voice, the warm, husky timbre of it, so different to her own accent when speaking Basic, but it echoed with pain now as she stepped closer.
“Osha has it covered,” she replied, drawing close to his side. “I’m needed here.”
Sol’s eyes shut tightly; his strong form bowed with pain. “Alya…” he whispered, the diminutive of her name, the informal she had granted him one night, sending a not unexpected shiver down her spine.
It had been a night they had stolen for themselves, a night they had given in to the growing bond between them, Knights grown and experienced both, though he had been so much younger than she at the time, but in that moment they had seized for themselves, she had granted him her name as he had granted her his heart.
They could seize another moment.
She had removed her gloves and gauntlets once they had returned to the ship. It was her bare skin she laid across his cheek now, drawing his eyes to hers as she pressed against his side, her eyes intent upon his.
She sensed what he needed in this moment, what it meant for her, and she would give it gladly.
“One moment, Sol,” she whispered. She could spare one moment; the Force could spare them one moment.
Sol’s eyes, usually warm and dark, had been lightened by a film of cold tears since they’d returned to the ship. They searched hers, flaring in recognition when he realised what she was saying, what she was offering, the same words she had offered him that night, so many years ago.
Alina let down the walls she usually kept her feelings for Sol safely ensconced behind, let him feel the light of her love, as powerful as the light in her veins, her eyes steady on his as she opened her lips to speak…
Only to swallow them back as Sol’s lips covered hers.
He turned into her body, her arms, as Alina drew him closer by her hold on his cheek, sighing in contentment as she felt his powerful body against hers once more. She was forced up onto the tips of her toes as his arms cradled her against him, hands tight against her waist and the nape of her neck.
Alina let him claim her body willingly, offering herself up for whatever he needed, feeling his turmoil still in the Force as he reached out to her, as he let her in. For a moment, only for a moment perhaps, but it would do. She craned her neck back, urging him to deepen the kiss, welcoming it as he groaned, low and deep, into her, the sound reverberating through her body, awakening a primal heat in her core.
She released his chin to slide her hand into his hair, delighting in the soft black strands between her fingers, so much longer than she remembered. It suited him, suited the powerful, wise Jedi Master he had become, but at his core, the passion remained.
And the recklessness.
There was an unhinged quality to Sol’s kiss, his hands on her body, the tightness with which he held her, as though she would disappear if he loosened his grip too much. It disturbed her even as a part of her revelled in it, wanted to urge him on, to steal another moment and another until they lost themselves completely.
Sol was seemingly in full agreement as he lifted her against him, taking a few short strides, until Alina felt the chill weight of the bulkhead against her back as Sol pinned her there, pulling a moan from her lips as he released her waist to hook one leg over his hip, his hand sliding up her thigh where her robe sagged open.
At the feel and weight of him, closer than they’d been in twenty years, Alina’s hand fisted in Sol’s hair, as she felt his need of her ignite something within her, something wild and hungry, prompting her to rock her hips into him. Releasing his hair, her hands lowered to his tunic, impatiently pulling at it, suddenly desperate to feel more of his skin beneath her hands.
She barely exposed enough to run her fingers down the line of his throat, feeling the pulse beating like a drum there, splaying her hand over his exposed chest where his heartbeat beneath her palm before Sol moaned against her lips and broke their kiss. Nudging her head to the side, he nuzzled down the line of her exposed neck, hungrily devouring every inch of skin he came to, even as he plucked one of Alina’s hands from his chest, twining it in his, still gauntleted one, and pressed it against the bulkhead beside her head. Alina moaned, eyes fluttering shut against the world, caught up in the sensations he was evoking in her, once so familiar, now restored to something approaching novel, her sleeping senses awakening to his touch, greedily hoarding every one for the years to come.
She felt first her belt, then her sash, loosen and fall to the deck. Then Sol’s hand, the one that had been clasping her thigh, sliding beneath her now loose tunic, tracing the line of her waist until it reached her breastband, before it dipped beneath. He remembered just how she liked to be touched as his hand, still covered in the soft leather of his glove, spread over her breast, cupping her before he kneaded, his lips covering her mouth and drinking in her moans as her free hand returned to gripping his hair, pressing herself against him fearlessly.
And that was when it hit her, the root cause of the need she had sensed in him. His need of her was being driven by fear, in this moment, fear of loss, of losing her. And fear was a dangerous path to start down.
No one knew that better than Alina. Fear, and the acts it could drive people to, the choices they could make, when fear was the catalyst, had blighted the beginnings of her life. She would not let it claim Sol too, not without a fight. Ultimately, the choice to succumb or to resist was his, and his alone, but she would do her best to remind him of who he truly was, and it wasn’t this desperation that drove him now.
She didn’t know what had happened in the years since their parting, but she could see now, just as how deeply it had wounded him.
How it was festering and poisoning him still.
It took everything within her, but their moment had stretched too far. As much as she wanted to continue, to see things through to their natural conclusion, now was not the time. Or the place.
Alina forced her eyes open, gently pushing back from Sol’s mouth, meeting his heated gaze, and realising her skin was gently aglow, the force of their passion bringing her power to the surface in her lapsed control.
Sol’s eyes, heated with desire, were also wide and reverent as he took her in, the gentle shine and warmth she gave off, thawing the icy fear that permeated his being. “Alya…,” he breathed, the hoarseness of grief replaced by the huskiness of passion, his forehead resting against hers. “Still so beautiful. As beautiful as the day we met…how can you still be so…?” he whispered, trailing off as she felt the crest of their mutual need break, gentling like the wind after a hurricane has blown itself out, his eyes closing as he just stood and held her, breathed her in, his hand trailing from her breast and simply resting at the curve of her waist beneath her tunic.
Alina felt a slight twinge of guilt. She had her own share of secrets, some more painful than others. “There’s much you don’t know about me, Sol,” she replied softly, as his eyes opened and met hers. “But I fear our moment has passed, for the time being.”
Something like resignation flashed in Sol’s eyes. “For that conversation, maybe,” he said. “But it is time for another.”
Alina gently raised a hand to Sol’s hair, stroking through his loosened hair. “There is something, something that happened on Brendok. Something that binds you to Osha and Mae Aniseya,” she said. “It’s festered in you ever since. I can sense it.”
“Yes,” Sol admitted, his body almost crumpling into hers for a moment. For a moment, silence reigned between them, then Sol straightened, his expression resolute, as Alina sensed the storm calm within him, just for the moment. “But you are only the witness. I owe Osha the truth of what happened. I have to make things right.”
“Then you’ll do it with me at your side,” Alina insisted, eyes searching his. “And when this is over, you and I will take another moment. There are…other conversations to be had, ones we owe each other.”
Sol nodded, warmth in his eyes, the match to the warmth in her heart, as Alina nodded up at him.
“But for now, we must move forward. To bring the murderer to justice and set things right, we must let everything else go for now,” she continued firmly. “Contact the Council, report the deaths of our team, and begin the hunt for Mae and this…Stranger.”
Sol nodded as he straightened, letting her go as Alina bent down to retrieve her belt and sash, setting herself back to rights quickly. Her blood hummed with unslaked desire, but it would have to wait.
There were more important issues to face.
“He is the same man who helped Mae before,” Sol replied, before he paused, shaking his head. “But it is more than that. I feel as though I know him more.”
Alina glanced at him knowingly. “As did I,” she admitted, as she moved around him and towards the transceiver. With a flick of a few buttons, she reset it. “Strange, isn’t it?”
Sol nodded in agreement, as something like unease flared in Alina’s gut, as she thought over the events of the last hour and the secrets Sol was keeping.
And the secrets she was keeping in turn. Deeper, darker even, than merely the truth about her origins or her longevity. Such as the truth about why she ended their relationship, all those long years ago. A truth that seemed to ring with portents as the image of the Stranger once again came to Alina’s mind.