PHOENIX

Who would you most like to go on a two month roadtrip with?

this is mostly answered!!

Who would you most like to punch in the face?

same for this one!!

Who would you most like to go to jail with?

besides merei, she’d want to go to jail with matt @knighthimself & fein @feinkomo they could either get stuff done OR take hours to get out because they’re being siblings and arguing with each other, one of the two

Who would you most like to be a permanent roommate of?

atticus @atticusprior because SOFT REASONS, currently she’s rooming with matt @knighthimself and i GUESS she wouldn’t mind rooming with him forever if he didn’t hog the blankets, nareen @nareens because they’re Soft Friends, xavis @ecroixx because she wouldn’t mind all the animals 

Who’s the sexiest person you know?

(nimm quietly in her mind) everyone, but also let’s run down this list folks, in no particular order: luha @olluans, atticus @atticusprior, khadis @khadisshrike, & orion @accessdecried

Who would you most like to go on a two-month roadtrip with?

matt @knighthimself & fein @feinkomo because we’re Soft, @atticusprior also for soft reasons, @nniedra because mother/daughter galaxy adventures, xavis @ecroixx so they can go find all the animals and pet them, khadis @khadisshrike because the Great Bantha Petting Adventure needs to happen

Who has the best butt out of everyone you know?

sorin @sorinnoveske probably, but also @khadisshrike

Who would you most like to go to jail with?

merei @mereiversio the guards would let them go bc they’d be screaming back and forth at each other, that’s their tactic

Who would you most like to punch in the face?

matt @knighthimself because he takes all of the blankets and snores really loudly but also for some reason by gut wants to add llewyn @llewynalarcon in here too I’m Sorry

you have been to worse places, boy. he tries to remind himself of this, tries to remember the crevice of the basement he hid in for one too many hours - days - years - how he never left, even now. how someone’s head might be the worst place to be and how he’s lived in it ever since the world became a crueler thing than a boy raised on make-believe hope and dreams could handle.

the rain outside, no matter how threatening - it is still better than the silence. he will hold on to it, to her - life, or just signs of it. he’ll do his best to not let it become a clinging again.

xavis follows the smaller girl readily, steps matching hers and eyes already sweeping the area, careful not to miss corners - one job, he reminds himself. this is easy enough, right?

her voice startles him out of his concentration, jumping a little before trying to cover it with a sheepish grin.

“yeah, i - i’m fine.” a blatant lie. “it is, i - it’s too still in comparison to jedha. i’m not sure what i should be trying to get used to.” something closer to the truth.

he stops in his tracks, eyes the room and te lock. “i… i don’t think so - i’m sorry. we could - we could ask someone, or - do you?”

Owl-eyes can know. Nimm’s eyes can—do—know a lie, know when it’s being concealed by a sheepish grin. She meets it with a slightly lifted eyebrow. His next words, though, she agrees with, and gives him a little nod, “It’s... quieter here.” 

There’s something more dangerous about that. A buzzing underneath it all.

She screws her mouth to the side, eyes fixed on the screen. “I might have something.” Turning away from him, she begins to rummage through her utility belt before procuring a small, rectangular piece of metal with a connector at the end. Matt’s droid had shoved it at her before they parted ways. 

The connector at the end lines up perfectly with a tiny opening on the side of the screen. She plugs it in. For a horrible moment, nothing happens; then, the screen flashes green, and the doors slide open.

“It’s okay to be—nervous. It means you’re paying attention.” It means you’re trying to stay alive. Once inside, the room lights up, each wall lined with smaller weapons, humming with the presence of Kyber crystals. But she’s distracted; still caught up in what Xavis said earlier. “I’m nervous too.”    

This was the only empty space on the ship Nimm could quickly access on the way back to Yavin IV. It’s silent, save for the steady humming of the ship’s engine. 

A medpac lays open next to her feet. Her coat is cast aside, sleeve long torn above the shoulder and left somewhere on Eadu, long buried in rain and mud. Nimm isn’t touching the stitching Matt managed to get done on her right arm. She’s only working on making it a little more presentable to the doctors in the medbay—and because she can barely stand the strong smell of mint coming off of the floss he’d used to piece broken skin together again.

The wound, beginning just at the cap of her left shoulder and winding down to her elbow, is at just enough of an awkward angle that it makes her attempts at wrapping it in gauze a little difficult. She holds the end of it between her teeth, the roll gripped tightly in her left hand as she begins—and freezes at the sound of the blaster doors whirring open. 

Her entire frame tenses, mind still buzzing from the firefight, from the sound of rain so loud she can almost still hear it, even now. But there’s something almost comical—like an alleycat spotting a stranger standing at the one exit, back curled, eyes wide, teeth still gripping the edge of the gauze. It’s only when she realizes who it is that she eases up slightly. “Fein,” Muffled, because she’s still talking with something between her teeth. She allows the gauze to drop. 

Blue eyes almost-white meet such dark brown, all he does is watch them, too aware of her eyes on him too, where they land, how he moves when they do, how she moves. How close are their feet from each other? Hand just above the space her arm hair grows. Is it too close?  It’s more than he can think of now, the dangers someone faced without seeing a doctor in so long, the fear he searches in her eyes now, everything as a hint of where he should hold himself, what she needs. He holds himself further back, holds his hand more gently.

The Force reaches out as a source of light, up her veins, down bones. He senses it, the scars around her neck, the arms, a history that strikes as a chord, or a knife, or just fear placed as concern. He looks up at her under eyelashes as his expression is still facing her hand, no question in the gaze, it’s just to see. Enough to speak words, if she looks long enough. He’s had to fight for his own life too, it doesn’t make it feel better that Nimm had to too so young.

His eyes are still down as she speaks of Yavin, still watching his hand, his Force signature spreading as water does, waves against a quiet shore, spreading calm, if he can. But there’s something soft across his expression. He says it, only half a joke, maybe hoping the air will be lighter, “We’ll call it a date,” look at her through his lashes again, and then down again, and still there as he answers her, “On and off, when they needed me. Twelve years, if you don’t count the time I wasn’t here. If Ahsoka asked for a house call,” and she knew he would be there.

After this, he steps back, slow, the way he lifts his head up, in the way he straights his back, stretches it, in the way his gaze turns back to her. “The vaccinations will do you well if you haven’t been on many planets. Your immune system will have a hard time taking to a jungle,” a beat, “I may be able to treat the scars, if you want it,” spoken quiet. 

The almost-blue, almost-not of his eyes reminds her of something she’s seen before in a dream. (Water from a fountain in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. There are stones at the bottom that she used to collect. She’d show up to the creche with her entire sleeves soaked from reaching beneath the surface to select the smoothest ones.) Atticus watches her beneath white lashes, and she watches him, wisdom in her owlish gaze. Sees the fight inside, the fight he’s known. Sees that he understands. She allows her hand to rest a little more readily in his palm. 

Atticus is all calm. A ripple in still water; something known beneath it, comforting. Her posture relaxes. She only realizes after it’s been a beat too long that she hasn’t taken her eyes off of him, and when she does, she forces her gaze back down to their hands. There’s still a small smile on her face. 

In return, she peels her Force signature back, allowing it to spread. It stretches out like a Tatooine sunset, something melancholic in the memory of the planet’s twin suns steadily making their way over the horizon. If she closes her eyes, she can still picture them. (Hot wind over her cheeks. She misses the dry heat.) 

Her smile grows at his words, “A date?” Echoed, eyes flickering back up to meet his. A question. She then nods, “A date, then. Are there—are there very many waterfalls, here? On Yavin?” 

From the way he answers her question about time, Nimm doesn’t immediately chastise herself for being nosy. Twelve years in the Rebellion, twelve years of healing, of fighting. She nods a little. Part of her wonders when Atticus first knew of the Light inside of him. Of what it called him to do. She can’t help but ask him, “Did you ever—was it ever something you knew? How to... heal, I mean. Outside of being taught in the Temple.” (The last formally taught Healer alive. That was another thing Nimm heard.)

Her hands tremble as they slide along the lines of his past, and he wants to tell her what each one means. She used to love seeing his new ink, hearing about the things he had done that earned a place on the canvas of his body, but they’re all about death, and he doesn’t want to talk to Nimm about death. He wants to tell her about the six baby porgs Xavis has nestled on Fein’s pillow at this moment, wants to tell her about the clearing he found about three clicks from the farm where a little stream settles into a pool of water – so clear its almost like the waters not even there. He wants to tell her about the youngling in Noa’s creche the day before the mission who looked up and said a cloud looked like a bantha and tell her how much he thought of her in that moment.

But instead the stories he has are dripping with blood and tears. They won’t make her hands stop shaking anymore than he will – not anymore.

But somewhere in his memories there’s a little girl looking up at him with eyes as big as the city their temple stands in the center of, as she holds a baby convoree in her cupped hands and asks him to help her get him home. Somewhere in his memories, she watches him scale a tree one handed with the bird in his own palm to tuck it back into a nest and watches with eyes even bigger than before as he slips and thuds to the ground. Somewhere, Nimm calls his name and scolds him for scaring her with hands that trembled just like they do now – and Fein can’t stop himself.

He reaches out, and takes her hands in his, “I’m sorry,” he tells her, looking down at their hands instead of her eyes (he sees the way she looks away when he meets her eyes, he doesn’t want to scare her – not when all he wants is to make her feel safe), “I didn’t think when … I just moved.”

He wets his lips, trying to phrase the words right, “She’ll remember Bail, like we will, and …,” he squeezes her hand, the smallest bit, gauze forgotten, “I don’t know who will remember us, but I never forgot you. It’s alright that you can’t remember me, because I’ll remember it all for the both of us. If you ever want to know something, just ask – and if not, then we’ll make new memories for the two of us.”

If he told her the stories about a boy fighting for his life in a ring made of dirt and blood, she’d tell him a story about a girl left alone to die in the desert. She’d tell him that people have wanted to make them both into Animal—to make them and accuse them and hurt them. She’d tell him, stories like that don’t scare me. And that would be the worst part: knowing they’ve both lived through the ugliness of it all and come out the other side with understanding. Nimm can’t speak for what Fein feels—there was a time when she could have, but she doesn’t know that time anymore—but she can say, if she looks into a mirror, she doesn’t know what she looks like after all of that.

If he told her he couldn’t tell her any stories, because the only ones he has are twisted and ugly, she’d say: it’s okay. All of mine are, too. 

Nimm’s thoughts, running too quickly, freeze when his hands find hers. She blinks, gaze fixed on the tiny scars lining the backs of his knuckles. Her voice is barely audible, “It’s okay,” It’s okay, there’s nothing else they can do. Repeats herself, louder this time, voice cracking, “It’s—it’s okay, Fein.” As long as they’re both okay. 

“But don’t do it again.” This time, she says it with a slight, hesitant smile curling at her lips, “Or else I’ll kill you myself, idiot.” And jabs him playfully in the side for good measure.

I don’t know who will remember us. The words make Nimm’s heart hurt for reasons she doesn’t quite understand, not fully. She catches her bottom lip between her teeth, eyes stinging without her meaning for them to as she finally looks him in the eye and nods. “I want to remember,” A quiet confession. “But we’ll make new memories, too.” They can—and they will.

There’s a slight pause. She looks back down at his half-bandaged arm and lets out a nervous, breathy laugh, “Now, stay—stay still. Let me finish this.”  

Water hangs thick in the air here, unlike Tatooine; plants that she could have barely ever dreamt of flourish (picture, a little girl, later young woman, with tiny seedlings growing from bird skulls. Trying desperately to make something grow in a place where nothing could. Not even her, at times). The sound of footsteps, hers and Atticus’s, are steady background noise. She’s come to be somewhat relaxed around him. Shoulders down, head tilted back, gazing up at the canopy. 

His presence lingers impossibly soft on the edge of her awareness. She tips her head down, focusing on the line of light that glows around his hair like a halo before she takes a few longer strides to walk beside him.

She’s memorized every turn they’ve taken since leaving the base. It’s comforting to know the way, to know that maybe some other day she could be the one to lead Atticus out her, if she wanted to. 

“I never thought a place could be so green,” Said with a small smile in her voice, hands down at her sides, fingers tapping habitually against the outer parts of her thighs. “It’s beautiful.” Different from the dry, arid heat of the planet where she had been raised. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, before turning her head to look at him more directly, “Thank you, Attie—” Her eyes pop open a fraction. (Where had she heard that before?) She corrects herself, “—Atticus. For being here, it... you didn’t, you didn’t have to.”

The crystal hums faintly from its spot, laid out on a piece of cloth in front of her with all the other components that go into creating a lightsaber. Not quite hers. Not quite not, either. (It called to Mathias, Nimm knows that. It called to him and his solar flare heart—she knows that. When she holds it flat in her palm, it buzzes faintly, as if saying, you’ll do. But you’re not the one I’m looking for. Nimm knows that.) 

Gaze fixed on the disassembled lightsaber, legs folded neatly, hands on her knees, she waits for something to happen. The others have already begun; parts levitating in midair and spinning precisely into one another. She’d repaired pods and broken things for as long as she could remember, but this is entirely different. This isn’t something she can just put together with her hands. 

It takes a moment for her to feel a shift in the air and immediately, she looks up, ears burning red with embarrassment at the sight of Noa.