FanFictionsUnite

I ran up to him, my blue sweater all too baggy and rough as I weaved my hand into his dark hair, the smell of his cologne invading my head and pulled him into me. 

“Hey,” I said. “Hey, hey, hey…” 

His heart shuttered against mine, perhaps in shock that I was real or that anything was real; his hands plunged into the depths of the sweater I wore, and he shattered. It was a quiet sound: the soft land of our knees on the grass as we fell, the ugly way his breaths came. 

“Is the coffee up for grabs?” he asked, moving over to your side of the kitchen. 

“Yes,” you said matter-of-factly. “You like it black, right?” 

“Right.” 

Reaching into the cabinet for a mug and filling it, you handed it over to him. “I’m not always one for something so bitter, but it definitely wakes you up,” you chuckled. 

One of his arms finds its way tucked across your waist and into the sheets below, and you relish the feeling of his stubble rubbing against your neck a little; the rise and fall of his chest, the warmth of his freckled hands in comparison to the coolness of the sheets and how he looks more at peace without his glasses on. 

Your face crumbled; your lips slightly parted, your eyes widened, and heart, admittedly, broken. Still, broken, in fact. Several days later, and you can’t remember where or how the shards fell. What furniture they slipped under, whose feet they accidentally wedged themselves into. 

He was leaving.

“And so the Galactic Empire begins.” The words tumbled from his lips so softly that even he almost didn’t hear them. 

His Master’s plan had finally reached fruition- a plot so simple Maul berated himself for not figuring it out sooner. Creating an army that would lead to the genocide of the Jedi Order. There would be survivors, he knew, but he doubted they would last long under the Emperor's new prodigy, Darth Vader. He had met Skywalker on the sandy dunes of Tatooine, and it was there of which his fate was decided. 

God, you sounded so small when you spoke to him like this. Your cheeks fired up and you could feel your heart painfully breach your ribs. When you were with a friend, talking to him was easy and conversation flowed remarkably well between the three of you, but alone it was quiet and awkward. He never seemed to want more out of conversations like you did. He was efficient and impersonal. You felt jealous of the other girls, who elicited long conversations from him without even trying. Even the boy in front of you- the one known for his notorious movie knowledge -had made your teacher’s great mind shift and contemplate. You didn’t watch many movies. You had done nothing to make him think this entire year, or laugh. 

God, you loved his laugh. 

The way his eyes crinkled and sparked with grateful humor, how even with the mask you could see the smile from his lips. You imagined his voice had been created from one of the strings of Apollo’s mighty lyre, melted down into a velvety tenor. You enjoyed it when he read things aloud, the sound of how the syllables danced across his tongue. You didn’t have a nice voice. It was deeper for a soprano, sarcastic and cruel; yet it raised when he came near. 

You wondered why. 

-----

You realized why Wrecker looked familiar. You knew you recognized that face- those faces -even if they were a little warped. “Clones.” 

Person A: “What happened to your hand?” 

Person B: “What?” 

[Person A] wrinkled their nose. “You smell funny.” 

Person B: “I smell like victory.”

Person A: “Victory does not smell like burnt Cheese-Its.”