kurip0chka

uhhhhhhh!! i am rushing to post this before i feel embarrassed soooo forgive me any mistakes.......😖!! be nice

“Don’t be a fucking idiot,” Marc snaps, riled in turn, and the winds picks up as if in response. The villagers had warned Valentino to wait out the storm, but he’d been too impatient, buoyed by the possibility of another survivor. The electromagnetic fields must truly be playing havoc with his senses, because if he’d had an inkling of who waited at the top of the path, he’d still be in the spaceport. Too late now. “Get inside.” 

Grudgingly, Vale does, letting his hood fall to his shoulders. The place is small, dark, but meticulously tidy. Marc hands him a clay cup, and Vale recoils at the glint of metal where his fingers should be. Bile threatens the back of his throat, but he swallows it down; he has no fluid to spare. 

“Ah.” Marc smiles, rueful, but with enough of a twist that Vale viciously wonders if he’d done it on purpose. “Couldn’t keep out of trouble, even after I left the Order.”

Left. One way to put it, Vale supposes. “Of course you couldn’t.”

Silence. Outside, the winds howl. 

“I thought about—” Marc swallows, a thick sound, pulling his right arm—missing right arm—close to his body. “I felt it, that night, the Force screaming. The cries. I wanted to—find any survivors, do what I could. Some troops found me first.”

An old curse finds its way to Vale’s lips. Purge troopers are sadistic; Marc must have found a way out, or they wouldn’t have stopped with an arm. 

“Drink,” Marc insists, threading his way through the tiny living space. “The storms provide good cover from those who can sense the Force, but they’ll blow for days.”

“Days?” Vale echoes. “I—I need to get back to the spaceport. My ship is there.”

“Nothing will be able to take off or land,” Marc says, matter-of-fact.

Fuck. Stuck here, then. “The boys will be worried.”

At that, Marc’s head snaps up, eyes dark. “They…?”

“I saved them,” Vale says, and wrinkles his nose as the memory washes over him: burnt flesh, choked screams, lightsabers flashing in a hypnotic whirl. Luca, clinging to his hand. “I wish I could have saved more.” 

Attachment, though, had always been his struggle. His younglings, his Padawan, had been his sole thought, and only once the smoke cleared and hyperspace was dancing in front of him had he sunk into the pilot’s seat, sobbing as the Force wailed in grief and anger. 

“They’re lucky to have you,” Marc says, which is perhaps the kindest thing he’s ever said to Vale. It rubs, the lack of teeth, and Valentino squirms in the face of it. 

“You said days?” he asks, brusque. “How many days?”

Marc shrugs. “It’s a storm. You want to go outside and ask it?” As if to underline his point, the winds scream, crashing against the mountainside.

“How long do they usually last?”

Another shrug. Vale’s chest burns with an anger he hasn’t allowed himself to feel for a decade. When he moves, his head brushes against something dangling from the ceiling: old parts from a ship, if he had to guess. Against the far wall sits a workstation, and as he moves closer, he can pick out the bones and carapace of a lightsaber. Marc’s lightsaber. 

Couldn’t keep out of trouble. Couldn’t let go. Always so reckless. 

“I have a room,” Marc says, occupying himself with something in the corner, fingers busy so he doesn’t have to look at Vale. “I will keep out of your way. I have work—the villagers give me things to repair. Just don’t go outside. The winds are stronger than you think.”

“So I have no choice.”