The once glowing neon sign in the window is flickering, a dying pulse of pink against the city gloom. Inside, the air still smells of the sharp, sterile burn of anesthetic. The taped-together chairs are now gone, replaced by vinyl ones that were a gaudy light blue.

The years had not been kind to the shop.

Maul stands in the threshold. He is not the same man who stood here what seemed a lifetime ago. His metallic legs are the least of it. There is a low-frequency hum that emanates from his bones, a vibration of violence barely contained. He is a man who has died and been unmade and put back together over and over again. He has lived a thousand lives already.

There is no shadow that he hides in this time. All of him is in the light as he opens the shop door, the bell above chiming on his entry. The little sound is a stark contrast to the large presence that just entered. But just like at the bar, he finds her instantly, his eyes going to her like a compass needle finds its north.

She is behind the counter, bent over a stack of papers. The years have traced fine lines at the corners of her eyes and threaded silver through the fall of her hair.

“We’ve just closed,” she says, her voice a little more raspy than what he remembered. The years have weighed on her as much as they have him. “Whatever you’re looking for, you ain’t gonna find it here.”

Maul doesn’t say anything as he steps inside, the door closing behind him.

She looks up, a sharp rebuke already forming on her lips, but the words dissolved into nothingness when she saw him.

She stared for a crooked second, registering the ghost that came back to haunt her. The corner of her mouth lifted.

“Didn’t expect to see you again.”

“Nor did I expect to return.”

Her eyes moved over him again, slower this time. They passed over the crown of horns, the hard years written into his face. The machinery beneath him, just briefly, before finding his left ear where the silver stud caught the light.

“And yet, here you are.”

Maul’s jaw tightened.

“The piercing has become...uncomfortable.”

She leaned back against the counter, folding her arms across her chest. One of her eyebrows arched.

“After fifteen years?”

“It began recently.”

“Mm.”

Her gaze remained fixed on the jewelry, and he resisted the urge to touch it.

“There wasn’t another shop between here and wherever you’ve been?”

“There were others.”

“But you came here.”

Maul said nothing. She watched him for another moment, then pushed away from the counter.

“Lemme take a look.”

She stepped around him and flicked the neon sign off at the front of her shop. Maul had already removed his tattered cloak and set it on the back of one of the chairs. He sat, hands flat on his thighs.

He watched her pull out the same kind of sterile gloves from years ago, her movements familiar and precise. She sanitized them before reaching for his ear, her touch light on the curve of it. His eyes shut. Through the latex, her heat was a spark against his skin, and beneath it, an ache he’d kept dormant for years began to stir. It was that ache, more than any memory, that had pulled him back here.

“Look like it’s healed well,” she said after a moment. “Swollen, though. Something catch you on this side?”

The Outer Rim skirmish was not a story he intended to tell. Nor were the dozen other hells that lay between then and now. They were just noise, irrelevant to the quiet of the room and the woman before him.

“A glancing blow,” he said.

Her fingers worked carefully at the backing of the earring, but it resisted. The metal had been warped just enough to catch against the post.

“I’m gonna get you a new stud with a different backing.”

She turned to pull out a new piece of jewelry, one with a flat back this time. The sterile click of the case pulled him back into the memory of their first meeting—the sting of the needle, her quiet focus. A bitter regret surfaced. To be that man again, the one of flesh and foolish hope, but armed with the terrible knowledge of all that was to come.

“This might hurt.” She said, as if he wasn’t accustomed to suffering.

She took his face, just as gently as the first time, and turned him away to expose his ear. She was as gentle as she could be, trying not to agitate the swollen cartilage.

His fingers curled.

The pressure was sharp as she pulled against the backing, building until he could feel his heartbeat in the heat. The clasp finally gave free with a small metallic click.

Then came the post. Cold air touched the open channel and Maul inhaled sharply. She placed the silver stud onto the tray beside her instruments, now just a small dull piece of metal instead of the symbol of disobedience it had been.

She took up the new post and slid it through the hole. She was careful and the metal was cool to the touch, but it still smarted. He felt the sting of it through the irritated cartilage, felt it echo through his facial bones. A small pain that brought up others, like a ripple in a dark pond.

She locked the back into place then peered at her work with a mother-hawk squint.

“This will be better,” She approved her work. “I still got sweets for brave customers, if you want.”

He blinked up at her, an eyebrow raised at her try at humor. Her smile was faint as she stripped off her gloves and dropped them in the waste bin.

“Or there’s tea upstairs, if you prefer.”

The invitation carried a heavier meaning that Maul did not need the Force to perceive. It was the same one that she gave him the night she had invited him back to her shop. He hadn’t expected to have the same offer twice, though deep down there was a hope for it. It had been a long time since anyone had treated him with this kind of uncomplicated kindness. Longer still since he had allowed himself to accept it.

“Tea,” Maul said, after a moment. “Would be pleasant.”

He followed her up the narrow stairs, the cheap carpet dulling the thump of their footsteps. The stairwell was lined with photos of her life. A gallery of her history displayed for him. In them, she smiled beside Twi’leks and Togrutas. Others were photos with humans with her same strong nose and easy eyes.

At the top, the flat opened up into a kitchen and living room tacked together with patchwork jobs.

She reached past him to turn on a lamp, lighting the room in a soft glow.

Maul stopped in the center of the room, his eyes scanning the space. It was cluttered, but clean. A home lived in. On the windowsill were real plants - not synths - in terracotta pots.

She filled a kettle at the sink and set it on an induction coil before pulling out two cups and a jar of tea leaves.

"You can sit. I promise the chair won’t break."

She glanced over her shoulder with a teasing tilt of her lips.

Maul didn't sit immediately. He remained standing, a towering, jarring note in a room composed of soft edges and natural light. His gaze tracked the leaves of the plants, the way they bent toward the filtered sun. He had spent years in places where nothing grew, where the only "nature" was the unnatural, sterile geometry of a ship's hull or the cold, unforgiving iron of a city’s belly.

Everything here made him uneasy. It was all too gentle and too welcoming.

He moved toward the chair she’d indicated and lowered himself into it, the weight of him making the old wood groan in bearing.

He watched her at the counter as she turned her back to him. The steam rose from the kettle, curling into the air, ghost-like and erratic.

"So what really brought you back? Because we both know it wasn't for the jewelry."

She turned, carrying the two mugs. The scent of the tea was sharp and floral. She set a mug in front of him, her fingers brushing against the scarred leather of his hand as she pulled the mug away. The contact was brief, but he knew it was intentional.

"It's just Gatalentan tea," she said, taking the chair opposite him.

She tucked her legs beneath her, leaning forward with her chin resting in her palm. She seemed content to let him arrange the fragments of his own story.

He looked at her, then back at the tea. He felt the phantom prick of the needle again, the memory of her touch from fifteen years ago when he had been a man with more flesh and less metal. He saw a stranger's face in the reflection of the tea.

"I have spent a long time being the weapon I was forged to be," his voice was rough. "Lived through things…that I should have died from."

He looked up, meeting her gaze, his golden eyes steady.

"I found myself thinking of this place," he admitted. “I thought of the way you did not look at me with fear and like I was just…”

He trailed off, lost for words. He worked each glove off, finger by finger, and wrapped both large hands around the mug. He lifted it to his lips and took a mouthful, buying his time.

She took a sip herself, eyes keeping his over the curve of the mug with the same look from the night at the bar.

“Like a man I wanted to fuck.” She said bluntly.

That made Maul pause, the mug hovering at the edge of his lip, steam curling into his mouth.

She didn’t so much as blink. She took another sip of her tea, her gaze steady over the rim. There was no game in her eyes, no coy challenge. Just the simple, weight of a truth he hadn’t dared to consider. A truth that had, apparently, been waiting for him for fifteen years.

"You," his voice dropping, "are remarkably bold."

She leaned forward, closing the distance between them.

"We both know you didn't come back for your ear," She reached out, her hand hovering just an inch from his. He didn’t pull back.

The floral, sweet flavor of the tea gathered at the back of his tongue as she ghosted her fingertips over his. The touch was electric and it made Maul inhale deeply through his nose.

“I am not accustomed to this,” he admitted softly, eyes downcast as a prick of shame spread along the back of his neck. A ridiculous thing. He was a terror of the galaxy, a being forged for pain, yet he was unnerved by a simple touch that asked for nothing but to be received.

“Do you think I care?” She asked, hooking a finger around one of his. It was a tender gesture that Maul’s eyes pinpointed.

“I do not know what you think,” he returned her gesture softly, hooking their fingers together. She was strong in her hold and it was grounding.

He watched her thumb graze a scar near his knuckle. The casual touch against the damaged skin sent a tremor through him. He could feel the delicate bones of her hand against his own, and the urge to crush them was overwhelming. He wanted to snatch her wrist, find the pulse with his teeth, and show her the feral creature she was so carelessly inviting in.

“Then let me show you.”

She untangled their fingers so she could push herself back from her chair, setting her mug aside.

Maul watched her as she rounded the kitchen table, the hem of her shirt lifting as she untucked it, and he saw the flash of her soft belly. She stepped between his legs, spreading them with a nudge of her knees against his. Maul grunted, teeth clenching.

He kept still as she came face to face with him. She smelled sweet, the notes of tea on the edge of her breath. Her eyes flicked down to his lips.

His hands finally rose, setting on the curve of her hips with a tight grip, and then he pulled her into him, setting her into the crux of his thighs. She gives a small ‘oh’, her hands finding his shoulders to steady herself.

He wanted to crush her. Instead, he pressed his fingers in until her face twisted, and gratification curled up from the base of his spine.

But then she smiled. Her eyes lit up, alive with something that matched him, and she rolled her hips closer. Her palms traveled the length of his neck, cupped his jaw, and settled at the back of his skull.

“I do not wish to be gentle,” he said, the words flat as he dug his nails into her skin through her shirt.

“You don’t have to be.”

He’d forgotten what it felt like to hunger for something other than violence. He surged up and forward, shoving his tongue roughly into her mouth, manhandling her into compliance. She let him take for a moment before her teeth bit at his lip, catching.

It felt like the piercing - sharp and stinging. It made him feel like he did that night. The singing of pain whistling through his bones.

She pulled back with a wet noise to breathe, and he chased her, the tip of his nose grazing her cheek, the corner of her mouth. It would be so easy to break her apart.

Maul’s hands rode up beneath her shirt, feeling how warm and alive she was against his palms. She tugged at him, urging him out of the chair and towards her room at the back of the hall.

He followed, gluttonous for her.

Inside her room, the bed was low, made of solid, carved wood and covered in a patched blanket. A stubborn piece of nature in a city made of metal. The city’s neon light filtered in through a window, casting all in an unearthly red glow. It fell across her bare shoulders as she stripped her shirt over her head, baring her back.

He came to her, his chest to her back. Large hands slid up her sides, tracing the ladder of her ribs until his palms found the heaviness of her breasts, thumbs circling her nipples. He wanted to consume her, grind her down to nothingness.

His voice vibrates low against the arch of her ear, lips ghosting a warm breath. Nervousness skirt his words.

”What remains of me...it is not whole.” His fingers pinch at her, making her gasp, her body leaning heavily back against him. “I cannot provide what a man — a whole man—would provide you.”

His words soured into self-contempt, his cruelty coming out in his touch against her skin. A tweaking of her nipple with his nails that made her gasp again.

There was only a brief pause as she processed, her hands coming up to cover his on her breasts. So small in comparison.

“It might surprise you what I want,” she whispered. She turned in his hands, her palms reaching beneath his tunic to press flat against his chest. “Just tell me what makes you feel good.”

He let her loosen the belt at his waist and slacken his tabard, pushing both to the floor. Maul had never been asked what felt good to him. He had no comparison. All he knew was what had been done to him, what he had been forced to become. What need did a weapon have for softness?

He let her explore, though he was uncertain of her touch, tensing as her hands brushed against scars and old wounds. When she traced a finger along the base of his spine, Maul felt a bright ache that was almost pleasure.

He wanted to snarl at her.

Her hands moved lower without pause, her fingertips skimming the seam where his skin and machinery met. He probed into her thoughts with a gentle push and found curiosity.

“Can you feel this?” She asked, unaware of his trespass. Maul’s eyes closed slowly.

“Yes,” his voice rough.

He felt her search the dips of the metal, the way the synth-fiber connected to the skin at his stomach. A finger slipped beneath the band of his pants, teasing just below his navel.

He nearly buckled with the charge that traced through him.

Every past intolerance and doubt tried to surface at her avowal. He snapped his palm to the small of her back, crushing her against him. Still, she reached for him, undoing the last bind of his pants.

The city’s light threw an afterimage of them onto her wall. A single beast with two spines, shadowed in red. His horns grew longer, fingers like spider legs. A monstrosity. And her, a daring temptress.

She didn’t flinch as she saw the smooth metal between his legs. She only looked with interest before her eyes took his again.

She pulled him into her bed, falling back and taking him with her. There was no choreography to it, only the slow winding of their bodies as she pushed her pants off with her feet, twisting enough to toss them aside. They were both naked now in the dim light.

Maul found himself again, and he moved to stretch her out along the bed, his hands coming to her soft body, catching her wrists and keeping them above her head.

“While I may not be able to give you everything, I will not leave you unsatisfied.”

He bent over her, the banded muscles of his arms flexing. She was so small beneath him. He could have split her sternum in two without half trying. She tilted her jaw, as if reading his thoughts, daring him. Maul let out a low noise in approval, wondering if she understood how close she was to the edge of his restraint.

His mouth explored her. The small furrow at the base of her throat, the taste of her skin. He traced lower, finding her breastbone, snagging her nipple under his tongue. She trembled as he pulled a sound out of her, a small rattle in her chest.

“Keep these here,” he said, tapping her wrists with a forefinger before his hands slid down, tracing her sides, the curve of her thigh.

Her skin was so pliant beneath his rough touch. He squeezed her until it creased beneath his fingertips, marked her with the heavy print of his touch.

She didn’t resist him as he spread her thighs wider, her knees bending to lift her hips. His hands slid beneath her ass, thumbs spreading her open so he could smell the heavy scent of her. See the glistening, pink skin.

He was patient. Took his time. He teased her with open-mouthed kisses to the inside of her thighs until she was arching beneath him, canting her hips up with need. Her hands twisted in the sheets above her head, trying so hard to behave for him.

“Maul, please.”

He smiled against her, sucking a sharp bruise into her skin. It was the first time she said his name aloud. A name that he hadn’t given her.

“So you know exactly who I am,” he purrs, fingers digging into her skin.

“Of course I do,” she pants. “You’re wanted by half of the galaxy.”

He hums, kissing the crease of her thigh, thumb dipping just barely into her cunt. She’s breathing hard, her chest rising and falling fast. When he scraped his teeth along her skin, she arched up and he reached out with the Force, banding across her stomach to keep her down.

“I could tear into your right now,” he mutters and he finally drags his tongue flat over her. She twisted for him, tried to get herself free. If she wanted to fight, he would savor her effort. “Find your femoral and open it with my teeth. Drain you from the inside out.”

Maul lapped at her, slow, a steady drag. He found the place that made her gasp and curled his tongue there, flicking with cruelty.

Every time she bucked, he bore down, thumbs pressing deeper into the center of her to feel the flutter of her muscles. The feeling of her straining against his hands was better than any life he’d taken. It built up in his skull, a hot smoke corkscrewing along his mind, the surety of her helplessness in his hold.

“Do it, then.”

He bent up to see her, hair stuck to her brow in damp streaks, eyes wide, mouth open with the barest edge of a smile. She looked anything but afraid.

He drove his tongue deeper, lips pressed flush. He drank in the sounds of her. Dark, full-bellied moans that sent something wild through him. He could have kept her there forever, but she was already coming apart, her whole body tensing as his thumb dipped deeper, pressing upwards.

He released the mental hold on her and she snapped up, hands curling around the back of his head, pulling him tight against her core. Her fingers curled around his horns, pricking them against the tips.

“Greedy little thing,” he smiled, pulling back only to press two fingers into her, crooking them upwards. Her thighs clamped around his head, a sound tearing out of her as he pressed hard.

She writhed against him, her voice cracking as she pleaded with him. He obliged her, twisting his wrist until his palm flexed against her cunt, spreading her, driving his fingers deeper. He flicked his eyes up to her again. Her face was flushed and wet with sweat.

She hadn’t let go of his horns. She clung to them, gripping as if to keep herself from falling apart entirely. He dragged his tongue through her, pumping his fingers roughly until she bucked one last time. Maul locked his jaw and drank her. He did not let up until her muscles went slack, arms falling boneless to the bed and releasing their grip on his horns.

He listened to the ragged breaths that came out of her and he released her gently.

He knelt up, his chin slick and shining. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist then crawled up the length of her body. She took his face, bracketed his jaw with her hands, drawing him in for a kiss. He smiled into her mouth as she bit his lip again, this time drawing blood.

“The sweetest death,” she laughed, voice hoarse. She looked up at him, the rim of red light painting her in a halo. She gathered herself, breath by breath. “Give me a minute. Kriff, Maul.”

He liked the way she said his name.

He shifted beside her, running a hand down the length of her thigh. He pressed his tongue against his split lip where she marked him. He cataloged the sensations. The pressure of her teeth, the warmth of her as she clenched around his hand. The ceaseless voices in his head dimmed.

She rolled onto her side, propping her head up with one hand to look at him. Her fingers slid down his chest, tracing a dark, scalloped burn beneath his pectoral, then another, jagged and ropey, across the curve of his bicep.

“I’ve had whole men who never managed half of that.”

He blinked, considering and flexed his hand, still sticky with her. He glanced at the lazy, feral glow of her smile.

“Is there something else we can do?” she asked, her eyes traveling down his naked body, settling on the smooth nothingness between his legs.

He followed her gaze and studied what was left of himself. The muscle and synthetic, the sheath of beskar bridging his hips where softer tissue should have been. He saw it as she must have - not grotesque, just strange.

“Perhaps, there is a way,” he reached for her, sliding his fingers into her hair. She turned into his touch, much like a Lothcat.

“Show me,” she said.

“It requires something of you. Your mind would have to be bared to me.”

She stilled at his words and he felt the bristling of her skepticism. He let his fingers linger in her hair, flipping a piece of it between two fingers. The silence in the small room felt vast.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, the words not entirely meant for her.

“Then do it.”

Their eyes met and Maul’s hand curled around her head, gentle, and pulled them close together. He rested his forehead against hers and carefully coaxed the boundary of her mind. She met him at threshold, fever-bright in the aftermath of her orgasm.

Memories scattered, a thousand moments flickering. Maul let himself pass as lightly as he could, showing her nothing of what lay in his own mind, all the howling and pain and kill-instinct. He had never asked, only taken, and this gentle work cost him more effort than slaughter.

He assembled himself in the shared space, an odd melding of spirits. A curious heat flared through her thoughts and he felt the flicker of it in his own. He felt his inhale in her lungs, her exhale in his.

“Maul?” She asked, half drugged in their sharing.

“Shh,” he soothed, his hand settling at the dip of her hip, the pressure of it echoing back through his own body. “This will do.”

He drew his hand down between her thighs again, fingers spreading between her, and somewhere in the hollow of his lower body, a borrowed warmth ghosted through the beskar and synthetic wiring where sensation like this had no right to exist.

His jaw tightened and his eyes closed. He pressed his palm flush against her and tilted her chin back with his other hand until the long column of her throat was exposed to him. He put his mouth there over the pulse and felt it kick against his lips.

He worked his fingers into her slowly. The feeling reached him second hand, a deep interior pressure. When he curled his fingers, sensation poured up her spine and into his own, each ripple of pleasure mirrored and amplified. They both gasped in unison. The feedback loop of sensation was dizzying, almost destabilizing.

Maul did not know this was possible and yet he was tasting the fruit of his theory. It pulsed across the bowl of his pelvis and he felt the uproar of arousal in his ears.

With every slick thrust of his hand, every curl inside her, Maul felt her nerve endings fused with his own. The lines between them blurred thin in this joined state, body to body, mind to mind. He could taste her pleasure thick on his tongue, and it drove him at a punishing pace.

He wanted more. To feel the limits of this, to find the point where her pleasure and his pain converged.

Maul pressed his thumb onto her swollen nub, grinding down with heavy circles as his fingers curled and pulled inside. He felt the electric coil within her draw tight, and then, all at once, snap. She clung to his bicep, mouth open.

The force of her orgasm washed through him in a brutal wave. It gutted him open, the sensations so foreign and overwhelming that he thought, for a split second, that he’d been shot.

He was the first one to fall forward, leaning into her as he carefully withdrew his hand, the heavy sensation in his pelvis leaving. The smell of sweat and sex mingled in the air, thick. For a long moment, there was nothing but their breathing. Maul’s face buried in her neck, every muscle in his body tight.

She rolled her head to the side, pressing her cheek into the crown of his scalp as he slowly closed the connection between them. Neither of them said a word.

He didn’t remember falling asleep. When awareness returned, he found her curled into his side, arm draped over his waist as he laid flat upon his back. He stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing a hairline crack in the plaster. The red wash from the night had faded to a sallow blue as morning crept close.

He had no blueprint for the aftermath of this softness. No code for holding this space. Each slow breath threatened to rouse the itch to flee, and he might have if she hadn't woken just then. She must of felt his tension and brought herself to life at it to soothe.

Her head turned and she kissed his collarbone.

“Didn’t expect you to stay.” She murmured. Maul didn’t answer.

She propped herself up on his body, her cheek pressed to his chest, an ear cocked.

“I could make us food,” She said, voice dusted with sleep. “Before you leave, that is.”

He wasn’t good at this. She must have felt his uncertainty, because she rolled out of bed, taking her warmth with her. She gathered her underthings and slipped them on along with her worn shirt. Catching his gaze, she offered a small, knowing smile.

She padded out and Maul lay there, listening to the sounds of her in the kitchen. The clatter of mugs, the shuffle of cabinets. He tracked the passing moments by the shifting light at the window. She returned with toasted bread and a fruit spread that she set on the table by the bed.

“You can stay as long as you need,” she said. “Or want.”

“I have business back on Ord Mantell by tonight,” Maul automatically replied, his mind already slipping back into his purpose in life. He pretended not to see how her face fell, how she schooled it just as quick.

He extricated himself from her bed, setting his bare feet on the cold floor. He took the time to pull on each piece of his clothing from the rug, a quick whisp of his fingers bringing each to him through the Force.

His joints were stiff, his body a stranger to this aftermath as he fastened the last clasp of his tabard. The echo of pleasure hummed in parts of him that didn’t exist.

"Ord Mantell," she repeated. "Right."

Her quiet words only agitated the unsteadiness beneath his sternum. He refused to look at her. A man who did not look could not be read.

She hadn't moved from the doorway, but there was no accusation in her tone. Only a kind of patient understanding that unsettled him more than her anger would have.

"You have done this before," he said.

"Said goodbye to someone who wasn't ready to stay?" She shrugged, and the movement pulled her shirt off one shoulder. "Once or twice."

He crossed the room toward her, slower than his usual step. When he stopped in front of her, he was close enough to see the faint bruise blooming beneath her jaw where he had marked her. Looking at it now, something possessive in his chest pulled tight.

"I cannot promise I will return," his jaw worked, searching for brittle words that had never been required of him before.

"I don’t expect you to." She reached up, brushing her thumb along the line of his jaw, over old scar tissue gone smooth. “But I would like it if you did.”

It was such a simple thing to say, and yet it sat heavier than any order he'd been given in decades. He thought of the Outer Rim, of the dozen contracts waiting for him like open wounds, of the version of himself that had walked through galaxies leaving nothing behind but wreckage and silence.

He thought of her plants on the windowsill, real and alive.

"I would like it as well," he said, and something in his own voice startled him.

Her smile was small, but it reached her eyes this time. Relief.

"Good." She stepped back to let him pass, then caught his sleeve before he left her doorway. "Maul."

He turned.

"Next time, tell me about the Outer Rim." Her eyes flicked to his ear. "All of it. Not the glancing-blow version."

He held her gaze a long moment, the offer of it settling somewhere he hadn't opened to anyone in longer than he could reliably count.

"Perhaps," he said, which from him, she seemed to understand, was as good as a promise.